Norman Rockwell painted idyllic scenes of life in America.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) was an American artist who painted idyllic and iconic scenes of life in America, creating some of his most famous works during World War II. He is best known for his cover illustrations for "The Saturday Evening Post," for which he painted 322 covers over 47 years. The majority of his paintings are oil on canvas or board.
Oil Paintings
The majority of Norman Rockwell's completed works were created using oil paint, rendered on canvas or board. Rockwell generally used Winsor & Newton oil colors, with a primary palette of 14 colors. His medium was rectified turpentine and Grumbacher's Oil Medium #2. Occasionally, he also used Shiva paints -- with a 13-color palette -- and their artist's medium.
Charcoal Sketches
Most of Rockwell's oil paintings were preliminarily developed by sketching his models and scenes using charcoal. In some cases, he would sketch while viewing the models; in other cases, he would take photographs, then render his charcoal sketch from the photograph.
Color
Norman Rockwell used oil paint as a powerful medium to communicate a scene exactly as he saw it. The oil colors he used, therefore, were extremely literal. If a subject's shirt was red, he painted it red. While his earliest illustrations were rendered in black, white and a single color -- most often red -- he later adapted to a much broader palette, mixing his own colors from a basic palette.
Hyperrealism
One of the most famous elements of Norman Rockwell's work was the extreme level of realism he was able to obtain using oil paint. He did so by literally constructing every scene from the ground up, buying, borrowing and posing every element of the scenes he was creating. While painting came easily to Rockwell, it was in the charcoal step of his process that he struggled most to create a picture that perfectly represented his scene. He would often create full-sized detailed drawings, on architect's paper, which he would then transfer to his canvas using tracing paper, then fill in using oil paint. Eventually, he adapted technologically by using a balopticon -- a photographic projector -- to create scenes on the canvas using charcoal.
