/lit/ - Literature

>>9995705
I think that it's a combination of the following:
>Very few artists have the calibre required to draw at that level
I'm a mid-above average artist myself and I have been drawing since I was six years old, scarcely skipped a week but my art quality would be immediately inferior compared to the ones that can draw with a godly skill. It can take hours to render something that looks realistic (something upwards of twenty hours probably). The Whelan kind of artists spends their entire existence drawing nothing except millions of human bodies, I'd only be able to draw at that calibre if I was to directly draw a copy someone else's artwork, whereas someone who wants to get consistently good must copy millions of other people's works before being able to make something amazing mostly from imagination.
>Most of the good artists get snapped up by the entertainment industry
I think they get siphoned off to the well paying areas - like video games and other forms of concept art, I think. /v/ and /tv/ would steal most of the good ones.
>Most book authors are pretty poor
I don't think that books sell as well as they used to and to improve profit margins publishers can use quickly photoshopped images that would take 10-20 minutes to put together from stock images compared to the 2-20+ years it takes an artist, depending on how shit they are, to get good. I think that most goo artists would be able to make very good photoshopped images too, but the entry barrier is lower and it looks "modern".
>Western art schools aren't teaching the fundamentals as well as they used to
You commonly see this complaint on /ic/ where artists will rant that western art schools are directionless/lazy/only teach modern art whereas places like russia teach more traditionally. Modern art is touted as being like pic related.

There's a huge trend towards minimalism in not only /lit/ cover art but also art itself.