Foliate Head: acrylic paint and collage.
Marly’s forthcoming poetry book from PS Publishing, The Foliate Head, is the current project on my work desk. Three white on black foliate head drawings have already been selected from my archive as page decorations, but I’m producing a new image for the cover. Here are a selection of drawings made in the last couple of days as I work my way through the many ideas floating around my head. To fit in with other books in the PS poetry series my image will be contained within a panel on the cover, and so it has to pack enough visual punch to work at a smallish scale. I’ll be aiming for a graphic, slightly jazzy tone. While these early images are rendered in grisaille, colour will come later, and there may be elements of collage, which I think is a great technique for getting crisp outlines. But right now it’s all trial and error and the time to be playful. Marly persuaded Andrew Wakelin, who did such a wonderful job on my monograph last year, to be graphic designer on the project, so it’s in safe hands. Watch this space.
Foliate head: acrylic paint. Below: Conté sketch for the same,
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Foliate Head: Conté pencil and acrylic paint. Below: pencil sketch for the same.
The thumb-nail sketches below were preparatory to the image at the top of the page.
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I like the detail of the jaunty bird gazing at such a fearsome vegetation-spewing maw, though it didn’t make it into the collage version. I’ll probably make another one that includes the bird, just for comparison.
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Below: taking a more lyrical approach.
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As per usual, I won’t show the final work here until the book has been published.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 