2014 ASoIaF Calendar...Disappointed

[eRome]

Has anyone ordered this yet?

If so, would you mind posting pictures?

I have to be honest, from what I've seen I'm on the fence about picking one up for next year. I know art is subjective, but the paintings by Gary Gianni looks lackluster. Maybe it's the washed-out color palettes, but they just seem odd.

I love the 2013 calendar. The art grabs the attention of anyone in my office. Marc Simonetti's impressionistic style is more to my liking and I'll be sad to take it off my wall at the end of the year.

By comparison, 2014 just seems....disappointing.

Thoughts?

[McCloskey]

I totally agree. I have all the calendars and this was the first to disapoint.

[Master of Coin]

I beg to differ. I thought they were lovely. I met the artist at Worldcon last year. He was displaying the originals at the Brotherhood Without Banners party and I was able to speak with Gary for a while about them.

He purposefully, and with George's wholehearted approval, avoided watching any of the HBO shows, specifically to avoid his mind being tainted by imagery from that source.

It is a problem in fantasy artistic interpretation that one set of imagery may become dominating. In the Tolkien realm for instance... we had many wonderful different artistic interpretations of... say... Galadriel. But since Peter Jackson aired the trilogy... all fan-art and other interpretations look like Cate Blanchett. That image has precipitated into the collective consciousness and forever altered the creative visualizations of future artists.

It is the belief of some of us that the broader the scope of visualization, the more enjoyable immersive fantasy can become. I recognize that Gary Gianni's visualizations do not have the bold colors and sharp edges of the John Picacio paintings. But they are gorgeous in their own right, and show a softer and perhaps more realistic side of Westeros. The painting of Eddard giving the sword Needle to little Arya is wonderful!