Perhaps this is silly of me, and yes completely subjective, but I wanted to see if others felt the same way about how the Tieflings' horns are portrayed in official art. It looks, well, not great. It's having them as a large mound jutting out from the forehead then growing around the crown of the head, into the horns tips. This is opposed to pretty much every unofficial depiction where the horns grow out of the sides of the head or forehead. Which, I think, looks much better.  

Heck, I noticed even the tiefling character in the new film has horns like this. If I could, I'd ask for this depiction in future D&D art. Just me? 

Is the official art portrayal entirely consistent?  You may be more studied and totally in the right on, but I don't think I've seen that consistent portrayal of any humanoid race in 5e.  Doesn't mean there isn't a style bible for artists though, but my memory seems to think the Tieflings are pretty diversely drawn in terms of infernal feature tells.

I think most folks in game don't go for consistent horns so much as letting PCs and DMs style them to the individual Tiefling.  I've had players describe theirs as "nubs" easily concealed with a hood or beanie to the sort of horns that require the tiefling to stoop through most doorways.

Yes, I am saying this seems to be consistent how tieflings are portrayed in all official publications. I could be wrong, as I haven't looked at all of them, but I think I'm safe in saying this is more or less how they are officially portrayed. 

And yea, I hear people all the time changing the tiefling look to suit them and their characters. I would too! So when I see them (seemingly) portrayed consistently as I described I gotta wonder why, and I don't think it looks great. I'm not saying throw it out, but perhaps a more diverse depiction? 

Looking through the art available on the site, I'd say it's quite common, but not 100% consistent across the board. Maybe a 60/40, 70/30 split. But I only looked through about 3 books and the NPC stat blocks in the search results. Some of the ones where the horns are coming out of the front of the forehead look like possibly awkward art/posing, but some look exactly how I'd expect a creature to look if they were to have horns similar to some species of ox or buffalo.

I want to say the official artwork for tieflings leans towards horns that come out of the forehead because they're based on devils, and devils in general tend to get portrayed with horns protruding from or near the forehead.

Devils' horns (and hooves) are meant to resemble that of a goat, and this is where my theory comes in: while goats have their horns coming out of the top or back of the head, their heads are also more vertically-oriented in that the back of the head is pointed somewhat upwards rather than straight back.  To make goat horns visible and recognizable on a human, the place to portray them would accordingly be... the forehead.

You'll notice that satyrs, also based on goats, often are depicted with horns that protrude in the same way.

Ya know, you would think that the horns were based on devils and thus goats, but they don't look like goats horns to me. They look like water buffalo. 

My brain finally connected what the horns are, and I think pocketmouse hits the nail; the horns are just like an  ox or water buffalo. Not like goat horns, which is what I think would look better and is what a lot of other artists go for. imho 

I'm not a huge tiefling fan in general, but I think I like weird water-buffalo tiefling better than "I'm a sexy anime devil" tieflings. They should be otherworldly and unsettling, not Timothee Chalamet with horns jutting primly out of his bouncing curls.

Just looking through the art of Tieflings in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, there's a lot of variation in how their horns are depicted. We have:

• Originating from temples and pointing straight up
• Originating from brows and following temples around, curling down and flaring out behind the ears
• Originating from brows, sweeping back above ears and curling up
• Originating from temples, growing outwards before pointing forwards and up
• Originating from brows, sweep straight up and slightly back
• Originating from behind temples, curling around ears
• Originating from brows, going up over the curve of the head before curling around and spiralling out
• Originating from brows in a curve that follows head
• Originating from above bridge of nose sweeping horizontally outwards then up and back

I always preferred the more subtle appearance of the tiefling as portrayed in the AD&D 2nd Edition PLANESCAPE setting. 

A long time ago, I had a tiefling with the "pair" of horns from a Manx Loaghtan ram. It depends on how one considers how the horns grow on that one. Many people say four, but technically, they grow from the same region. So, I (and the DM) said it counts as a pair as per the PHB.

I also had a Tiefling more recently whose horns laid flat across the skull and wore a hood to hide them. He also wore really baggy trousers so he could hide his tail. He had Human-toned skin but solid white eyes. So, he pretended to be a blind Human. (He had his reasons.)

The official artwork follows the PHB description, but the PHB description allows far more options than what is presented in any of the official artwork. It does not say it has to come from the brow. It just says they have horns that take any variety of shapes.

Go nuts. Don't restrict yourself to any official artwork. The depictions are rather standard for everyone, but D&D is about the exceptional and not mundane.

Heck. You aren't required to stick with the PHB descriptions or other sourcebooks for that matter. You can customize everything ever since Tasha's and in 1D&D in the first proposed UA source for character creation. You want a half-Halfling-Tiefling? Do it. There are rules on how to go about making that happen now (not that there were any needed given how WotC practically brow-beat the idea of players playing their way).