Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Perceval Rockwellwas a 20th-century American author, painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He also is...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth3 February 1894
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
If the public dislikes one of my Post covers, I can't help disliking it myself.
It wouldn't be right for me to clown around when I'm painting a president.
Travel is like a tonic to me. It's more than just getting away from the studio for a brief rest. I need it to recharge my batteries.
Eisenhower had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor's. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out.
I didn't know what to expect from a famous movie star; maybe that he'd be sort of stuck-up, you know. But not Gary Cooper. He horsed around so much... that I had a hard time painting him.
The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be.
I had a couple of million dollars' worth of... stock once. And now it's not worth much more than wallpaper. I guess I just wasn't born to be rich.
Very interesting for an old duffer like me to try his hand at something new. If I don't do that once in a while, I might just turn into a fossil, you know!
You must first spend some time getting your model to relax. Then you'll get a natural expression.
I talk as I sketch, too, in order to keep their minds off what I'm doing so I'll get the most natural expression I can from them. Also, the talking helps to size up the subject's personality, so I can figure out better how to portray him.
The Balopticon [a machine that projects photos on canvas to trace the lines] is an evil, inartistic, habit-forming, lazy and vicious machine! It also is a useful, time-saving, practical and helpful one. I use one often-and am thoroughly ashamed of it. I hide it whenever I hear people coming.
I used to sit in the studio with a copy of the (Saturday Evening) Post laid across my knees ... And then I'd conjure up a picture of myself as a famous illustrator and gloat over it, putting myself in various happy situations, surrounded by admiring females, deferred to by office flunkies at the magazines, wined and dined by the editor...
Things aren't much wilder now, I don't think, than they were back then. Of course I just read about all the goings-on now. Ha.
A face in the picture would bother me, so I'd rub it out with the turpentine and do it over.