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Passion v’s Addiction.
Norman Adams once said that, except for a rare obvious exception, he could not remember any illustrator who considered doing illustrations as being work.
He echoed the same message the Famous Artists give us: Creativity is its own reward. Call it Heaven-inside, Atman. Thus the term for “ by far the greatest explosion of artistic creativity the world has ever seen”: Atman’s Big Bang. An explosion of artistic creativity by the Public(the Public controlled it) for the Public.
If the passion these twelve Famous Artists got from being creative made these Famous Artists far more famous than any other artists in recorded History then for Norman Adams this passion has always been an addiction. And if there are other artists that also have this addiction to create then they are often locked into a genre of art that limits their versatility. And if there is the rare artist who is addicted to create with versatility then it is unlikely that such a rare versatile-addicted-artist was born at the right Time and the right Place to do what has never been done before in art, music or sports.
If these Famous Artists felt the reward of their creativity with a passion ... then the addiction Norman Adams has makes him addictively push his passion of creativity in each of his paintings and drawings to get more and more life-punch out of the image that keeps pushing this passion towards its addictive limits. He does this addictively because bringing images to life with detail and punch is the love of Norman Adams’ life... just like the only real love in Mozart's life was music.
This can be the only reason Norman routinely puts in far more effort to bring his images to life than his illustrations would normally require... than his originals would normally need.
Far, far more effortless effort than illustrations need.
In the Illustration business, an illustrator gets a job usually from an art director of a company or publisher. The illustrator then makes a rough “sketch” of the image he has in mind and then submits it to the art director who then accepts or rejects it, or asks for modifications. If the art director give his OK then the illustrator paints the original that will be used to publish.
As a rule, the illustrator makes the original sometimes 2 to 5 times larger than the final image will be so that he does not have to put needless time and effort, detail, into the image. The original might look rough but it does not matter. This is because when it is reduced in size for the magazine much of the roughness will vanish. Art directors take this for granted. And many have a reduction-lens they use to look through and see how a large original illustration image will look in its final reduced size.
Nearly all of Norman Adams' illustrations routinely break this rule. This is because most of Norman Adam's “sketches” have more detail, life and punch, in them than many illustrators put into their final illustration. And Norman Adam's final illustrations have so much detail and life in them that they can only lose it when reduced in size for publication. (See paperback illustration on right.)
The magnified images tell this story not only in his illustrations but indeed in everything Norman Adams paints and draws. Most of the images at this site can be blown-up so that they can tell this story that makes his paintings so unique.
While the originals of most artists might look good and impressive from a distance they often lose their life and “punch” on closer inspection. With Norman Adam's images it is the other way around. From a distance his images might look like those of other artists, but the closer we look the more detail brings them alive. This “life” is simply a measure of Norman Adam's “creation-is- its-own-reward” addiction that has been his only real love, all his life... the exact same love we can feel inside when we look at his paintings, but sometimes only when we look closely.
And this does not end the story: no matter how much we magnify these computer images, this “love inside” will not come close to the impact or punch of his original paintings, not even in the prints of his original paintings.
Besides “©,” most web sites carry small images of artist’s originals. This is mostly because big images are far more likely to make the originals less impressive -- “less magic for the Magic Realism.” And this applies especially to original-illustrations. This is because most original-illustrations fall apart even when they are reduced. This is probably the main reason illustration-originals never get the prices that originals get. Because the illustrations were made to be reduced in size. When they are hanging on the wall life-size they simply look “bad” compared to what was in the magazine.
-- Geza Palotas
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