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Anyone else notice that drow are always depicted in two very different ways:

In all text:
In all Images:

In all the text I read of the drow, they're supposedly just as beautiful and fair as the elves.

Yet in all the Images you see (Official at least), they're all gaunt, bony, and have monstrous faces.

am I the only one bothered by that or what?

Beauty is in eye of the beholder.

Earther models are often bony, thin and they get well paid for it.
As to face dipiction, a smiling Drow is rare to see. Often the face could be a picture of a Drow with Evil intent and the artist tries to convey that in the face.
There again it is a subjective view each person brings with them when looking at an image.

What you see as monstrous faces others might see as mysterious, intriguing or perhaps even enticing.

on the book covers, yeah they look kinda- that way. tho most pictures i seen were very beautiful (tho a bit top heavy) and feminine. tho most of the pictures i seen on drow are on devient art.

Are we talking old editions of books or newer printings? In some of the 2nd ed era novels, the cover art (specifically the Drizzt books) were not great depictions. But Lockwood's renditions are great. WotSQ had some wonderful cover art, as did his covers for the Starlight and Shadows trilogy. Even the LP books had great cover art. Too bad the insides didn't quite match up....

maybe its just me then. I was going through Drow of the Underdark a while ago and noticed this. Most the drow pics are hideous there...

Is that the 2nd ed one or the 3.5 one? Both had some good pics, and some bad ones.

3.5 I'd take it. It mentions will saves which I heard 2nd didn't have and I believe it said 3.x somewhere.

Drow get to be both at once.

It's an elf thing, iirc.

Well there has been discussions among former employees of TSR or WotC that doing art in black was hard to do. This might also result in how images appear.

That subject was discussed ad nauseum in a thread over on Candlekeep. IIRC, the general consensus was that that "reason" for not using black skin was really just a cop-out for artists who could not handle the dark tones. And some of the "old" or "ugly" drow of those days were due to artists not reading the descriptions of the characters!

[quote="Aylstra Illianniis":25n2alrp]That subject was discussed ad nauseum in a thread over on Candlekeep. IIRC, the general consensus was that that "reason" for not using black skin was really just a cop-out for artists who could not handle the dark tones. And some of the "old" or "ugly" drow of those days were due to artists not reading the descriptions of the characters![/quote:25n2alrp]

"Black" is a very difficult color for some artists to handle. The general way to handle it is either:
A) Fill in the black areas with, well, black ink, which you can't really shade too easily with. (Unless you use hashing or screen tones)
B) Use some other color to represent black, often various dark greys and/or blues. Which is more accurate of reality, truly black things wouldn't reflect any light what-so-ever.

The artists they get for some of the books, particularly the early ones, weren't that good or well known. The 1st edition D&D books have absolutely abysmal art in them.

[quote="Cipher":25n2alrp]3.5 I'd take it. It mentions will saves which I heard 2nd didn't have and I believe it said 3.x somewhere. [/quote:25n2alrp]

For the record, you are correct, D&D 2nd Ed. did not have Will saves, it had 5 completely different saving throws from 3rd Ed:
* Paralize/Poison
* Rod, Staff, or Wand
* Petrify/Polymorph
* Breath Weapon
* Spells

I met the ugliness on the book covers of the books. I had opinion about artists that when they heard that the character is 70-150 years old, they decided that they should look like that.

Now let's look at it from different light. We meet on the images average boys and girls. And even prettiest beings can look ugly when they have evil thoughts on their mind. This and that equals...