Norman Rockwell essays

Norman Rockwell essays Norman Percevel Rockwell was born on Feb. 3, 1894 in New York, New York. As a boy he grew fond of the country, where he moved to a few years after he was born, and stayed away from the city as much as he could, which would later be shown in his works (Buechner, Retrospective, 24). When he was 14, he had to commute to New York City twice a week to attend the Chase School of Fine and Applied Art. After awhile he dropped out of his sophomore year of high school, and became a full time student at The National Academy School (Buechner, Artist, 38). He illustrated his first Saturday Evening Post cover on May 20, 1916, which was his first big break. Norman Rockwell says, If one wants to paint covers for the Post, one must begin by accepting certain limitations. The cover must please a vast number (no matter how: by amusing, edifying, praising; but it must please); it must not require an explanation or caption to be understood; it must have an instantaneous impact (people wont bother to pu zzle out a covers meaning) (The Norman Rockwell Album, 29). More people have seen Rockwells work, mostly on the covers on the widely circulated Saturday Evening Post, more than all of Michelangelos, Rembrandts, and Picassos put together, estimated by Life magazine (Walton 7). Rockwell creates his pictures in separate stages. First he makes a loose rough draft of his idea. Second, he gathers costumes, props and models. Rockwells models are usually his friends, because he knows them and likes them (Walton 16). Later on in Rockwells lifetime he would stray away from using real models, he would use photographs to do this step instead. He would take either sketches or pictures and then paint them onto canvas. Next he draws individual parts of the picture. Fourth, he would sketch the whole drawing in great detail. Fifth, he would put color into his sketches, and sixth he would put all the parts together ...