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| Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) April Fool: Girl with Shopkeeper (1948) Rockwell typically spent three weeks on a Post cover, including time allocated for gathering models, props, and photographs. His April Fools Day covers, of which this painting was his third and final, were executed at smaller size than his typical works, probably in order to accommodate his deadline. |
When I was younger, I was mislead by well-intentioned people that taught me that art was a matter of temperament. I cannot recall the number of times I was told that, "artists only paint when they are in the mood." And though I will admit that there are days in the studio when everything clicks and the painting comes easy, and there are days when it would have been better had I been forcibly restrained rather than let near my easel, creating is still a job like any other, and cannot be governed by the caprices of mood. After all, how many of us would be accepting of the emergency room doctor who refused to treat a gravely injured patient on the basis of "not feeling it" that particular day? When an artist has a lot to get done, they do not have the luxury of working only when they feel like it.
As Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky once wrote:
We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
Usually, the antidote for not being in the mood to paint (i.e. lacking inspiration), is to paint. Once the brush actually touches the canvas, artists tend to get lost in their work. And the best way to get past the mental obstacles that may prevent you from even picking up your brush in the first place, is to have a set-schedule.
The younger me would have assumed that Norman Rockwell was one of those rare someones who was always in the mood to paint. How else could he have accomplished so much on an illustrator's tight deadlines? But the truth was that, though he may have had a greater facility with the brush than most, it was his ability to work according to a plan that got him through the natural ups-and-downs we all experience, and enabled him to produce at a consistently high level.
One should never paint along vaguely from start to finish, hoping that sooner or later the picture will turn out all right. He should plot every step and work to a fixed schedule. I couldn't meet (deadlines) . . . if I didn't plan every move in advance and hold to my schedule. . . . it's advisable to make up your mind to do a certain definite amount in a given period and then do it. It's surprising, but true, that you can accomplish just about what you determine to do.¹
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¹ Guptill, Arthur L., Norman Rockwell: Illustrator, (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, Eighth printing, 1975), p. 207.