Norman Rockwell Magazine Covers

The last project the older students worked on this semester was to design their own magazine cover.  This was after we studied the life of Norman Rockwell and enjoyed his amazing paintings and how he was such a master storyteller in his illustrations.  Students were given a list of magazine ideas or they could come up with their own...great opportunity to be creative.  We discussed elements of good design and they had to use some of these in their layout.  Then came the colored pencil technique which I will explain here:

After drawing your design, it is very important to erase your pencil lines so you cannot see it thru your colored pencil.  You will still see the lines faintly after erasing but because colored pencil is permanent, you will not be able to erase your pencil lines later.  I showed the students the image of the eye that I worked on from a magazine picture and showed them the two techniques- layering and burnishing.  This worked best to show in small groups at  a table in the back of the room so they could see the details.  Colored pencils need to be very sharp to use this method.  We used Prismacolor(I recommend the 48 color set) because of their wonderful blending ability.  Students were required to use the layering technique (2-4 colors) in their magazine cover and not to go too dark in the beginning.  Choosing analogous colors works well for this method.   With practice, this technique can create depth and realism and created a lot of interest with the colors showing through in the under-painting.