I was watching Columbo (1975) last night and Lesley Ann Warren was on. I kept thinking, wow, she looks exactly like many of the wide-eyed women Larry Elmore draws. I've thought the same thing about Beverly D'Angelo. I wonder if that's the idea, or just a resemblance to one of his models, or what.

Never thought about it before, but Beverly D'Angelo...I can see it.

Good call. Those women definitely have the Elmore look.

no pics?

Actually, in one of his older art books, he explains this. At one time, Larry had this weird urge stuck in his head that he needed to do the eyes bigger on his women folk. Easley, Caldwell and Parkinson kept poking fun at him for it, because they knew it looked wrong. But Larry insisted it was right. But one day his brain just kinda clicked back into reality, and suddenly he realized he was surrounded by walls of pictures of bug eyed women. You'll see it in his older work. His new stuff, not so much.

"People in all five cultures were attracted to similar geometric proportions in the face. They liked female faces with small lower faces (delicate jaws and relatively small chins) and eyes that were large in relation to the length of the face. ... Males in all cultures were attracted to female faces displaying large eyes, small noses, high cheekbones, small chin and a large smile" http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002139.html

He was correct.

This why is eyeliner is hot, it makes the eyes look larger.
It's interesting that men find females with a small jaw attractive ... and women find the "lantern" jaw attractive. They're (obviously) opposites, but serve as a quick shorthand (is there another kind of shorthand?) to differentiate the genders.

A quick wikipedia search on testosterone shows the effect on the male during puberty:"Growth of jaw, brow, chin, nose, and remodeling of facial bone contours" (emphasis added)

Also, a beard make the jaw look larger. No coincidence, then, that the ability to grow a beard has become bred into the human. Beards also serve to quickly identify the virile from not yet fertile or past their peak males (no beard, dark beard, gray beard).

We're just mammals.
More to the point, Elmore and Bradley can really paint a woman!

It's not really a short hand way to differentiate genders (the differences between the two are all too obvious ). It is a way to pick genetically superior breeding partners. Over the millennia it gets hardwired. Same thing in most other animals. There are outward traits or demonstration of abilities that get looked for.

Point taken!
That's really what I meant, but hadn't had my coffee yet or my editor nearby,

The misstatement WAS funny.

That is an uncanny resemblance. I've always been a LaW fan.