By Sharon Jeffus
One of the most beloved artists in America is Norman Rockwell (1894-1978). His pictures were recognized and loved by almost everyone in America. He was a genre artist, capturing a heartwarming era of American history. For over forty years, as an illustrator, he did the covers of the Saturday Evening Post, giving him greater exposure than any other artist in history. Over the years, he depicted a unique collection of Americana, a series of images of remarkable warmth and humor.
Norman Percevel Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894. He and his brother Jarvis lived in New York City until Rockwell was nine years old, when his family moved to the suburban commuter town of Mamaroneck. Rockwell left high school early to return to New York City. He attended classes at the national Academy of Design and later studied under Thomas Fogarty and George Bridgman at the Art Students League, where his discipline, hard work and "wonderful" sense of humor were widely recognized. His major breakthrough came in 1912, when he illustrated his first boo, C.H. Claudy's Tell Me Why: Stories about Mother Nature. His early illustrates were done for St. Nicholas Magazine and other juvenile publications. By 1913, at only 19 years old, he was art editor for Boy's Life. He sold his first cover painting to the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 and ended up doing over 300 more. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson sat for him for portraits. He painted many other world figures, including Nassar of Egypt and Nehru of India.
The American people loved Rockwell's images and his support of traditional values. His ability to communicate these values visually through the events and circumstances of a rapidly changing world plagued by war made him a special person - both hero and friend - to millions of his fellow Americans. The power of art as communication made him a visual spokesperson for all that was good and decent in America in his time period.
As his personal contribution during World War II, Rockwell painted the famous "Four Freedoms" posters, symbolizing for millions the war aims as described by President Franklin Roosevelt. One version of his "Freedom of Speech" Painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Eighty magazines used his cover illustrations. No paintings by an American were ever published on such a global scale as Rockwell's "Four Freedoms." First appearing in the Post, the originals were used by the United States Treasury in a 16-city tour seen by 1,222,000 people who purchased over $133,000,000 in war bonds.
Rockwell made no secret of his lifetime preference for countrified realism. "…Things happen in the country, but you don't see them. In the city, you are constantly confronted by unpleasantness. I find it sordid and unsettling." His time spent in the country was a great influence on his idyllic approach to visual storytelling on canvas.
Rockwell's ability to "get the point across" in one picture, and his flair for painstaking detail made him a favorite of the advertising industry. He was also commissioned to illustrate over 40 books including the popular Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. His annual contributions for the Boy Scout calendars (1925-1976), was only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works - the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow, which were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's career as an illustrator.
Christopher Finch, author and art curator, had this to say:
"Norman Rockwell created a world that, because of its traditional elements, seems familiar to all of us, yet is recognizably his and his alone. He is an American original who left his mark not by effecting radical change, but rather by giving old subjects his own, inimitable inflection. His career has been an ode to the ordinary, a triumph of common sense and understatement."
Although Rockwell was always at odds with contemporary notions of what an artist should be, he chose to paint life as he wanted to see it. Only recently has his greatness truly been appreciated. For a long time the artistic community looked down on his talent, considering him "only an illustrator." Now they concede, along with the American public, that he was one of the greatest artists who ever lived. From 1953 until his death in 1978, he lived at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where there is a museum devoted to him.
In 1957, the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington cited him as a Great Living American, saying that " … Through the magic of your talent, the folks next door - their gentle sorrows, their modest joys - have enriched our own lives and given us new insight into our countrymen."(1)
"Oh Boy, It's Pop With a New Plymouth," 1951
The red bow is the center of interest; it is what catches our eye first. Does the dog look similar? Why? Notice the shading on the birdhouse. Shading, shadow, and texture are what make objects look real. Notice the use of red and green in the picture. Red and green are complementary colors; this means that they are colors that are opposite on the color wheel. You can shade red using green instead of black. Try this with an apple. Color the apple red and then use green to make it darker on one side. You can also shade a green leaf with red. A good project for this time of year is to make a wonderful outdoor scene, turn it into a window picture, and then take it to a home for the elderly. Many times they cannot get out of bed to go to the window, so you can give them something beautiful to look at. You could even make a winter or Christmas scene and put a window over it. Rockwell was able to give people a wonderful warm feeling, just by looking at his pictures. Can you do that?
You can also make a snow scene on white paper and then use white craft glue and dry detergent soup for the snow to give the picture texture. You can also do a wonderful snow scene on light blue paper. If you use only shades of blue and black and white, you are doing a monochromatic color scheme which works well for a snow scene.
Concepts to Learn
- genre painting
- illustrator
- posters
- realism
- the Golden Mean
- center of interest
- monochromatic
- complementary colors
- gridded
- proportion
- diagonal lines
Drawing a Person/Knowing Proportions
Norman Rockwell was a master at drawing people. It is very important to know how to measure proportions when drawing the human body. Measure the head, using a pencil and your thumb. You can tell by this illustration that an adult person is seven and one half times the length of his/her head. If you study the actual gridded skeleton, you can make some observations that are valid for most adult people. For instance, the hand is a full three head lengths below the actual head. The hips are two heads below the chin and the knees are four full heads down. Look carefully, and you can learn other relationships of one part of the body to another.
For a wonderful art lesson on the Golden Mean and drawing things in correct proportion go to www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/design2.htm.
It's All in the Details
Look at this lovely picture of a child (see magazine). Did you know that the head is larger in proportion to the body in a child than in an adult? An adult's body is about 7-1/2 times the size of the head as the previous picture shows. In this picture by Renoir (see magazine), you can see that the child's body is 4-1/2 times as large as her head. Measure with your pencil. The younger the child is, the larger the head is in proportion to the body. Choose a particular age child, and then draw the child and an adult in the picture with them. Before you begin, draw the child in circles and lines first, to capture the movement, then fill in the details. Artists are observers and noticing proportions is very important to obtaining realism.
Once you learn to use proportion in the human figure, you can put action in your picture by using diagonal lines. Movement is generally shown by diagonal lines. This is easily seen in sports pictures, but you can see the use of diagonal lines to show movement almost anywhere. If you think of a picture where a person is standing vertically, the picture wouldn't have much movement, only stillness.
One of the best things to do as you are learning to draw people in movement is to get someone to model for you. This however, isn't always easy. People sometimes don't want to stand perfectly still, as they stand on their tip toes pointing skyward. I know a young man who does Christian superhero comic books. His art work has many dramatic figures with bulging muscles. The figures are very realistic. When I asked him how he learned to do such great muscle structures, I thought he would have studied medical books of muscles or some advanced drawing book, but instead he told me he practiced by drawing action figure dolls like GI Joe and the Incredible Hulk. What a great idea! The muscles on these dolls are exaggerated but anatomically correct. Most of these types of dolls can be posed in action and don’t mind standing still for long periods of time. Besides that, you can get them inexpensively at yard sales. You can get them cheaper than the artist models that are much more costly and often don't have muscles.
Even with all that said, it still is a good idea to get a book of anatomy and study both bones and muscles. When you draw you need to start with circles and line; then fill in with muscles and muscle tone.
(1) New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl as quoted in Art News, September 1999
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