From the Archives is a video series that explores the archives of the Norman Rockwell Museum. In these videos, the NRM Curatorial staff will highlight both archival elements both from Norman Rockwell but also from the Museum’s broader illustration collection. Each episode will focus on a unique theme.
Collections Hunters:
Uncovering the Museum’s Art and Archival Collections
The Expressive Face
How did artists like Norman Rockwell, Austin Briggs, Jon Whitcomb, and others create the believable unique faces that can tell a whole story by themselves? In a magazine cover, like those by Rockwell and Stevan Dohanos, the image, with its setting and, most of all, its characters, must convey an anecdote without any help from words. So each face must be carefully crafted to do its part in creating the drama⸺or comedy.
Al Parker: Illustrating the “Stopper”
In How I Make a Picture by Al Parker, he wrote about his creative process for magazine story assignments. The artist’s first step was to read the manuscript while keeping the target audience in mind. As characters entered into the tale, he jotted down their descriptions – hair color, eyes, age, type of clothing, disposition, etc.
Support the Virtual Museum and Support your Neighbors
