Book: Art & Arcana: A Visual History (Dungeons & Dragons)
August has been for me the Dungeons & Dragons themed month. After the Lore & Legends book, I picked another history lesson book: Art & Arcana. As the title hints, the main topic is about how D&D art and style has changed during on each edition; From the original, black and white and a bit amateurish drawings, to the astounding coloured depictions of adventures, adventurers, and monsters of the later editions.
One thing that stands out when you read the book, is that there is a lot of information. It is not a mere visual journey, and even focusing only on the textual content, I feel the quality and depth of it to be superior to Lore & Legends. There are so many interesting stories and details of the evolution of TSR, its illustrators, the art direction... I went for it because of the drawings, but it was a pleasant surprise to find so much content.
The illustrations are spectacular and, of course, the main focus. Being able to see all five evolutions of many creatures, book covers, the TSR logo itself, even some maps! Going from clearly hand-drawn irregular maps to the ultra-detailed and dense most recent iterations is such a joy. Learning the fun source of quite a few monsters (spoiler: plastic children toys), and then watching how they evolved into more serious and colourful depictions, is also very cool.
I've always been drawn into D&D because of its amazing book covers and incredible drawings, and this book contains the reason why. Moreover, In my case I began with the 2nd edition and its more professional but still mostly mono-color images, so experiencing how much everything has evolved, and expanded, and matured, was very fascinating.
A remarkable reference book.