How I Make a Picture
Category: Books,Arts & Photography
How I Make a Picture Details
In his own words, Rockwell retraces the steps by which he creates his famous paintings, from the moment of inspiration, through the search for perfect models, locations, props, and costumes, to the finished work
Reviews
Anyone who thinks that what Norman Rockwell did was easy, or that it is not art, with a capital A, needs to read this book. Even given that by this stage of his career he relied heavily on the aid of photographs, and also given that in this book we can see his pictures emerge step-by-step, what Rockwell could do still seems nearly miraculous. Most impressive to me is a series of photos documenting the creation of a charcoal sketch of a cowboy. We see how Rockwell projected a photograph of one of his models onto a sheet of paper, and how he carefully traced all the lines. Easy, right? Then, he went on to utterly transform the tracing into something entirely different from, and entirely more life-like than, the original photo. Any artist working in the area of realism, and especially any artist relying on photographs to achieve that realism, will benefit from this book.