Norman Adams (American artist)

Norman Adams (October 3, 1933 in Walla Walla, Washington – July 4, 2014) was an American commercial performer and illustrator.

Norman Adams began to fascination and paint taking into account he was nevertheless a child. He collected pictures from all type of magazine and autograph album he could find and later found ways of improving them. He was especially captivated by the trompe-l'œil realism of artists in the publicize of William Harnett, John F. Peto and John Haberle.[citation needed]

He studied art at the Los Angeles Art Center School in the further on 1950s. While he was in Los Angeles he spent months painting a portfolio in which he used his trompe-l'œil realism to convince the managers of the largest illustration agencies in NY that he could attain what no other artist/illustrator could. The three largest agencies in NY wanted to hire him. He chose to action for the Charles E Cooper Studio.
While Adams was in action in NY he met his idol Robert Fawcett at a Society of Illustrators exhibition.

Like most conventional Illustrators at the times Norman Adams considered Robert Fawcett to be: "The Illustrator's Illustrator." When Norman Adams finally met Robert Fawcett, he, Fawcett, was appropriately impressed like Adams' paintings that he considered Norman to be a Babe Ruth of Illustration, perhaps because Norman worked for the "New York Yankees" of Illustration at the time: the "preeminent" Charles E Cooper Studio.

Another more obvious defense Fawcett might have referred to Adams as Cooper's Babe Ruth was his versatility. When Adams was operating for Cooper unaided Don Crowley could paint realistically plenty to be versatile. All of Cooper's supplementary illustrators, like Murray Tinkelman, Coby Whitmore, and James Bama were too specialized to be versatile. Not by yourself were they specialized but they were specialized for thus long that they would not get jobs uncovered their “specialty.”

What on bad terms Adams's paintings from others was the trompe-l'œildetail he routinely put into his paintings. It was this additional detail that made his paintings stand out, especially to professions taking into account Cooper and Fawcett.

Illustrators took for settled that it was a waste of time to put detail into their originals that would be purposeless in the published reproduction. Adams afterward knew this, but what he did not take for granted: although much of the trompe-l'œil detail he put into his originals would be purposeless in reproduction, it was this detail that would get him additional jobs that other illustrators would not get. It was everything these additional jobs that made him Cooper's “Babe Ruth.”

Adams' illustrations included works for Reader's Digest, Boys' Life, Harpers, National Geographic, TV Guide, Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, Sports Afield, Field and Stream, Business Week, Cabela's, and extra paperback covers. He along with authored a textbook now in its 30th Edition, Drawing Animals. When the magazines started to fail the Charles E Cooper Studio had to downscale. This prompted Norman Adams to associate an elite charity of illustrators at Artists Associates.

In 1980 Lenox hired him to attain a totally limited edition Lenox Collection of 12 unique plates that were released in 1982 called The American Wildlife Plates by Norman Adams. In the mid-1980s, Adams was unadulterated an opportunity to paint for the 1988 Minnesota Wildlife Art Show. His enactment was a life-sized Golden Eagle in a Grand Canyon setting. For years he sold his wildlife and animal paintings in galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

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