At the easel, a new painting of Hervé and the Wolf is underway, a rather formal work, rooted in shape, colour and texture. The colour is limited to a sea of blue against black with some islands of off-white, though I’m sanding back in places where I want that shock of red oxide under paint, like a bloody graze.
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It’s the element of intimacy and touch that drives this piece. The points of contact suggested by the slivers of overlap as the wolf presses into blind Hervé’s neck, and the back of Hervé’s hand nudges the hair on the wolf’s foreleg.
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Above and below: transparency, disconnect, the ebb and flow of fur, an absence of gravity and the electrical charge of touch. The oddness of a dream.
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I’m obsessed with negative space. Put simply, if the negative spaces aren’t working, I feel an unease close to nausea. At this point I have to keep tweaking and shifting things until the nausea stops. Then I know that everything is fine. If a negative space is a centimetre out… or less… a hairsbreadth (when I was a boy I mistook that phrase as ‘hare’s breath’, which works just as well)… then I have to keep working until I’ve resolved the problem. It doesn’t matter in the least if this drops a shoulder to the wrong place anatomically, or means that one hand is bigger than it ought to be. All that matters is that the negative space stops shouting at me.
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The painting started with new maquettes of Hervé and his wolf which I then used to make a number of rough compositional sketches on paper…
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… before laying out an underdrawing on panel.
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The wolf, quite small as a maquette
has grown bigger for the painting.
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
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I’m thrilled you are back at the easel, great to see your progress so far. And as you mentioned, your composition is balanced and handsome. Wonderful.
I enjoyed your pointing out the frequent disconnect between naturalism (anatomically/realistically sound, yet off ) versus the aesthetic. I encounter that often and have had internal tussles over it. Lately it has become easier to let that go. Just last evening I chopped off a fellows lower torso becomes it screwed up the negative space. Logic be damned, thanks for encouraging us to have the strength of our convictions.
Keep posting progress. I like the bloody scrapes btw.
LG
Thanks, Leonard. Good to hear that you too are disallowing anatomical realities to curb your compositional exuberance. Yes, I’m all for damning logic, especially the kind that gets in the way. Of course even dreams have a logic of sorts, and that’s the kind I aspire to.
The bloody scrapes are proliferating!
Oh! At the moment all I can say is…WOW!! To answer Zoe’s query….I suspect that Clive only sleeps for about 30 mins at some point in the night, possibly hanging from the rafters of the studio like a bat….or he has springs like Zebedee and just can’t stop boinging! Can’t wait to see how this lovely painting develops XX
i really love this wolf….and his fur is coming in gorgeously….and you know i absolutely adore this color palette….a wonder, already!! and boy, you’re moving fast! are you sleeping?
This is looking lovely Clive! it’s interesting you mention feeling nausea until the negative spaces are resolved. I feel a similar sense of unease until everything ‘clicks’ in my illustrations. Perhaps it’s an innate artistic trait?
Saul Bass, George Him and Edward Bawden were masters of negative space – and yourself of course.
If it’s innate, there are many who don’t heed it. Every time I walk around one of the great galleries of the world, I have to hurry past the paintings that have bad negative shapes shouting at me. There’s an imperative to get away, out of sight and sound. Difficult to explain, especially when it involves a genius like Rembrandt (Don’t get me going on The Jewish Bride!)
Saul Bass, the master! Bawden too. I didn’t know the name George Him, but now I’ve googled I see do know his work. Great stuff.
Aarrgh…yes…all that uncomfortable space beyond the bride’s shoulder for a start! Shiver worthy.
Oh thank god it’s not just me. I once, in a spirit of honesty, shared my unease about TJB with a friend and elder painter, and you would have thought from his expression that I’d bludgeoned a kitten to death in front of him. I’ve been more cautious since then in sharing judgements based on negative space.
I have a theory (fantasy) about my discomfort with Rembrandt’s Bride, and it’s all to do with the artist’s unease about being the means of marking and celebrating a marriage over which he has misgivings. So wily painter that he is, he slyly reveals the truths of the relationship in the composition.
His looming presence, hand pawing at her breast. “This is mine!”
Her forbearance, stiff smile and downcast eyes.
His garment, costly but there’s so much of it, pressing in on her and taking up all the air.
She appears to lean in to him, but then you see his hand at her shoulder, pulling her closer.
But the compositional element that makes me want to run, is the edge of his cloak behind him, the way it sweeps down and off the picture. (What’s under it? A rapier?) My eye keeps being dragged back to its queasy exit down-stage-right, and I find it unendurable. (In much the same way as I think she’s going to find that marriage unendurable!)
Rembrandt knew what would make the eye uneasy, what would force any viewer to step back and turn away. He made the painting he was commissioned to make, but added a dash of poison.
I know I’m a little bit mad in these matters.
I love how richly detailed and involved your theory/fantasy is Clive!
it could almost be a plot premise!
I don’t think its mad at all, more of an assiduous passion?!