Here are some of the drawings posted in part 1, together with what they became.
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Green Knight
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Gawain
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Green Knight
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Gawain
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The cover of Marly Youmans’ Val/Orson
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Hervé and the Wolf
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Peter Shaffer’s Equus
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The garden at Penparc Cottage
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Catchmay’s Court
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The castle for Green George
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The Devil disguised as a Peddlar Woman for L’histoire du soldat.
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The cover for Marly Youmans’ Thaliad
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The following is from an e-mail I sent to Marly Youmans. But as it touches on current studio matters, and ‘Marly matters’ too, with references to images I made for her book Thaliad, I thought I’d post it here.
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Above: new painting of Gawain, and below, the first stage of the Green Knight
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Henrietta. Taken by a fox… we think.
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The English Lion: interior decoration for Marly Youmans’ novel Glimmerglass, due from Mercer University Press in September
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Images of my paintings, or details from them, have been chosen for the covers of quite a few poetry collections, novels, plays and textbooks. The usual process is for a publisher to approach me requesting the use of an existing image, and I just have to agree the terms. There’s no creative input on my part because the work is carried out by graphic designers. But while Marly’s The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press) carried a detail from one of my paintings, Touch, on its cover, the arrangement wasn’t repeated because thereafter we evolved more collaborative methods of working together.
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To date I’ve made covers for Marly’s novel Val/Orson (PS Publishing), the cover and interior decorations for The Foliate Head (Stanza Poetry), the cover and decorations for her epic poem Thaliad (Phoenicia Publishing) and the cover and decorations for her forthcoming novel Glimmerglass (Mercer University Press). In every respect these have been collaborations, as what I do is always a direct response to her writing. I read her manuscripts repeatedly before making any preliminary sketches, annotating their margins with my initial ideas. Marly and I don’t much discuss what will be required for a cover or for the decorations. She and her publishers entrust the visual aspects of her books to me. I think she quite enjoys the surprises that come through this way of working.
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Above: artwork for the back cover of The Foliate Head
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I never aspire to ‘illustrate’ a Marly Youmans book, preferring my role as provider of a gentle accompaniment to her words. I make an introduction (the cover) and then she sings the melody while I play a few chords in the background (the page decorations).
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It’s not the usual way for a writer to have much influence with a publisher over the choice of artist for a cover, and it’s perhaps because Marly elects to work with small, specialist houses, that she’s been able to bring me into the loop. At Stanza Poetry she even arranged for my brother-in-law, Andrew, to be the designer of The Foliate Head, because he and I are so in harmony in the matter of book design.
For Thaliad, the book was meticulously designed by the founder and editor of Phoenicia Publishing, Beth Adams, which made the entire process bespoke, rather than on the design conveyor-belt that is the modus operandi of most big publishing houses.
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Increasingly I like to produce not just the image for the cover, but the whole spread with the text incorporated into it. I love the art of lettering, and usually work the titles and authors through the medium of collage. And because adding images to the inside of a book doesn’t add printing costs as long as the designs are in black, Marly and I have been able to persuade publishers to have page decorations in her books.
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Above: chapter-heading for Thaliad
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The brutal economics of publishing these days means that there is rarely an illustration fee with a small specialist publishing house. So instead I strike a deal for copies of the book. At the end of the day I own the original artworks, and they can be offered for sale with my dealer. I couldn’t make a living as a book illustrator if this was my only source of income, but as the process of collaborating with Marly is tangental to my career as a painter, I don’t have to rely on it.
I don’t think we ever set out to work together so regularly, this author and her ‘illuminator’. The processes gently evolved, and now there’s a familiarity to them that feels comfortable and ongoing. Marly barely approaches me any more with the outright suggestion that I might do a book with her. It’s more a case of her asking ‘Are you busy?’, followed by ‘Could you possibly make the time?’ And my response is invariably, ‘What’s the deadline?’, followed by ‘Ummmmmm, is there any wriggle-room?’
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Above: cover artwork for Glimmerglass in progress
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I’m strictly hands-on. I paint, draw and collage my designs together, having had no experience of rendering on a computer.
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Above: work-book sketches for Glimmerglass
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It’s not that I’d be averse to working on a screen, but I haven’t had the time to teach myself. I’d probably prefer to combine both ways of working, as I don’t like the idea of spending more time in front of a keyboard than I already do.
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Above: a dragon for the cover of Glimmerglass
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Marly and I had collaborations that preceded our work together on the three ‘decorated’ books. In 2011 it was Marly’s suite of poems celebrating my sixtieth birthday retrospective exhibition that kick-started the anthology The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Grey Mare Press/Carolina Wren Press/National Library of Wales), in which she was joined by Dave Bonta, Callum James, Andrea Selch, Catriona Urquhart and Damian Walford Davies. (The title of her poetry sequence loaned itself to the collection.) Additionally in 2011 she was a contributor to Clive Hicks-Jenkins: a monograph, published by Lund Humphries, with her essay Fire in the Labyrinth exploring my preoccupation with the ‘miraculous’.
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There are other projects in the pipeline. I already have an anthology of her poems waiting on my computer desktop, and I have my eye on her forthcoming novel Maze of Blood, because who wouldn’t want to design a book with a title like that?
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Even when beleaguered with arctic weather and a recalcitrant cold that’s driving her slowly bonkers, Marly Youmans can’t but be the consummate scribe. This is her on the weather right now in Cooperstown.
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‘Because I am dreaming of hot weather and a thunderstorm over Lake Otsego instead of ice and ice and blebs and icicles and rimed crystals and simple prisms and stellar or sectored plates and dendrite crystals and triangulars and plate crystals and fernlike stellar dendrites and bullet rosettes and crystal needles and hollow or capped columns and double plates or split plates and snow and snow and did I say ice and snow? Ah, the alien, barely inhabitable realm of Yankee winter with its radiating dendrites–so strange, so insane, so cold-and-virus laden, so ingenious in its complex miseries, so full of barkings like a seal, so many-kleenexed, so white, so starry, so shivery, so interminable, so Narnian, so White Witchian.’
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At which point, she posts a snowy chapter heading, one of those I made for Thaliad (see above) that is a good match for the ‘Yankee winter’ she’s lamenting.
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Read more from the marvellous Marly at her BLOG. In the United States Thaliad may be found at Phoenicia Publishing, and in the UK would-be-purchasers can order it from good local book shops, or from Amazon. And while on matters ‘Thalian’, if the five-star reviews at Amazon don’t tempt you to open your wallet, then cast an eye over the scrumptious review of it at Tom Cat in the Red Room, which would be enough to make me walk barefoot through snow to my nearest store to get a copy. Fortunately I don’t have to, as I have not one but a little cache of Thaliads on my shelves, a perk of being its cover artist and decorator.
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Over at Marly Youman’s Thaliad page on Facebook, there has been handsome praise for the book from author/illustrator James Artimus Owen.
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J A O: It (Thaliad) was one of the few books I’ve purchased in recent years that I think was executed flawlessly, in every way.
M Y: Oh James, thank you! That’s so, so lovely. I shall have to share that with Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Beth Adams. Collaboration with them is beautiful. I just hope it manages to keep moving out in the world.
J A O: It’s a high water-mark of what’s possible, Marly. It’s old-school book-crafter perfect.
M Y: Ah, that is so sweet to hear. Thank you. “Perfect” and “high-water-mark” are very satisfying words!
J A O: It’s all sincere. With that book you leapt from being one of my favourite writers to a game-changer. The literary sphere will have to catch up to what I and others have already seen – but there is no doubt it is a remarkable achievement.
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Thaliad is available as a paperback or hardback, and may be purchased from the following sites.
Order from the Phoenicia Publishing online store
Order from Amazon.com
Order from Amazon.UK
Order from Amazon Europe
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… the floor is littered with drying book-plates for Marly Youman’s Thaliad, awaiting only a trimming. (The air at Ty Isaf is ripe with the smell of oil-based printing-ink and white spirit.) These were promised over at Phoenicia Publishing to the first fifty purchasers of the book, and I regret to report that I’ve been unforgivably tardy over getting the job done. Still, they’ll be off next week. I’ll send all the ones for recipients in the US to Marly or Beth for re-posting, but shall forward the UK bookplates directly. Apologies to everyone for my slowness with this. I’ve been away in the Land of the Mari!
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Above: trying out a print made on coloured paper in another Marly Youmans book, The Foliate Head. The turquoise looks pleasingly jazzy against the red endpapers. I’ll cut a rubber-stamp for my name, as I think the chunkiness of the relief print needs bold lettering for ‘Hicks-Jenkins’ in the space at the bottom. And as I’ll be using this plate in many of my books, a stamp will move things along a bit.
There’s a glittering review of Thaliad at the book blog Tomcat in the Red Room. Tom writes with a depth of knowledge that deftly contextualises the poem by explaining its literary precedents, and yet offers his insights with such a light touch that any reader, no matter how new to narrative poetry, will feel safely guided through the unfamiliar territory.
Marly has recently been canvasing for suggestions as to how Thaliad might best be described, and Tom has surely added to her shortlist with his summary of it as a ‘mythopoeic epic poem’. Click on the above link to read his review of Thaliad. As a little taster I offer here an extract from it about my contribution.
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‘It would be remiss of me at this point not to mention Clive Hicks-Jenkins, who as well as designing the book’s cover, has illustrated small iconographic vignettes that head each of Thaliad’s twenty four chapters (note: the same number of books divide The Iliad). These striking black and white collages definitely influenced my conception of Thaliad’s world, and the grey-tone in which they’re rendered acts as a satisfying visual call-back to the descriptions of ash and rubble that dominate much of the poem’s imagery. As well as being unusually beautiful, Thaliad’s artwork is loaded with symbolism and connotation. The image that heads chapter twenty three, for example, depicts two of the children (now fully-grown) fighting over Thalia. The icon itself is a silhouette-esque depiction of two men locked in combat, with their swords provocatively placed so as to resemble the positioning of erect phalluses in a way that alludes to the lust that is the deeper subtext and reasoning behind their combat.’
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An anecdote: the late, great Lizzie Organ, who ran the Kilvert Gallery in Clyro and was the first person to show my work, once surprisingly announced… surprising because it was apropos of nothing at all we’d been talking about… “Clive, I always look for the penises in your paintings, and I never fail to find them.” I replied “Sorry Lizzie, you mean the penises in the paintings of nudes?” “No, I mean in all your paintings. In the still-lifes, in the landscapes, in every one there’s a penis, and moreover an erect one!” Her partner Eugene Fisk looked aghast. “What on earth are you talking about Lizzie? There are no penises in Clive’s landscape paintings.” “I beg to differ, Euge…” Lizzie shot back, “… they’re in all his paintings and I always find them.” Bewildered silence from Peter, me and Eugene. “I don’t know why you’re all looking at me like that.” she exclaimed, before bringing the subject to a close with her final word on the matter: “I like them!”
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Elizabeth Adams to Clive Hicks-Jenkins: 15 June 2012 15:52:42 GMT+01:00
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‘Dear Clive, Thaliad will be 6 inches wide by 9 inches high. I haven’t decided yet if we’ll do a hardcover edition as well; I’d like to. The one I did for Dick Jones’ Ancient Lights worked out well, and since this will be a special book — and is, after all, an epic in the long litrary and cultural tradition– collectors might be willing to spring for the hardcover. In that case there will be a jacket with end-flaps, but there’s no possibility within this printing method of doing anything with the endpapers themselves. However, there could be a decoration on the first page, or even an allover pattern if some aspect of your artwork lends itself to that. We don’t need to worry about that at this point, it’s just something to keep in the back of our minds.
Thank you so much for sending the pdf of The Foliate Head. It’s even more gorgeous than I had imagined, and I can’t wait to hold a copy in my hands and see those lovely pages on paper. The typography is very beautiful, and the “heads” are fabulous – each breathes with its own internal energy and spirit. It’s going to be a glorious book.
I’m mailing cheques today, including yours.’
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins to Elizabeth Adams: 16 June 2012 13:19:58 GMT+01:00
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‘The cover for Thaliad is well underway. For a couple of days I made drawings that pursued the fatal fight between Samuel and Ran, because it was the episode that most caught at my imagination in graphic terms. Striking, though I was uneasy that it was rather too male and tough. But then suddenly the sense of nature and of knowledge learned and stored that’s at the heart of Thaliad gripped my imagination, and the cover image became something far more life-affirming and mystical. It is a portrait of Thalia, but not as you might imagine!!! More to do with inner worlds than outer ones.
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Clive to Beth and Marly: 20 June 2012 08:24:54 GMT+01:00
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‘Beth, Marly, there’s an image of the final paste-up on the Artlog today, though I plan on re-making the Y of Youmans to be a little ‘brighter’. Peter will photograph the artwork under proper lights when he returns tomorrow evening. This has all gone relatively smoothly, hasn’t it? Nothing like the clock ticking to concentrate the mind.
A good time to thank you both for passing this my way. It’s not often these days that artists get the opportunity to make the type of hand-crafted imagery for covers that I so enjoy producing. Photographs and photo-shop seem to have taken over at the big publishing houses, and to my eye the results are too often characterless. I guess I’m a dinosaur here, one of the old brigade.
The back cover artwork will follow later today. Quite simple, with plenty of room for blurb etc.’
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Comment from Beth at the Artlog: 19 June 2012 15:17:14 GMT+01:00
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‘Clive, we will do our best to make sure the book is indeed beautiful to look at, and does justice to this wonderful artwork. I too despaired of what to put on the cover, because the poem covers such a span of time and change. I had hoped you might settle on a portrait of Thalia, but didn’t suggest it — isn’t it odd how things work out? One of the aspects of the illustration I love the most, and was surprised by this morning, were those bright red lips. For me, they connect with the fruits– for Thalia represents life, and growth: sustenance received and sustenance given — but she also grows from girl to woman. Clive, it’s perfect, thank you so very much!’
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Thaliad is available as a paperback or hardback, and may be purchased from the following sites.
Order from the Phoenicia Publishing online store
Order from Amazon.com
Order from Amazon.UK
Order from Amazon Europe
Detail of the finished print.
A lino-print in progress is a living thing. No matter how carefully I’ve planned a block, once underway things shift to create unexpected effects and unplanned moods. Sometimes the result is so far from the concept that I have to undergo a mental readjustment to allow for the transformation twixt idea and realisation, yet to step back from this creative flux would be to hold fast to sterile facsimile and absence of sparkle.
The first tiny, scrappy sketch.
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Second stage: a cut-out.
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The penultimate stage of design, made as a collage, had a jaunty bird, plump, confident and joyful, his head raised in song. In the finished print the little fellow seems far more vulnerable, his head smaller, his body frailer and his eye wide with what might be alarm. But he is what he is, and I can’t bring myself to reject him, even though he is not what I expected. Marly’s text is all about the vulnerable cast upon the choppy seas of a changed world, and if my bookplate is more in the spirit of what she created than I planned, then I accept that my subconscious knew better than my conscious mind what was needed for the job.
With the finished bookplate in place, the little bird serenades my frontispiece portrait of Thalia.
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A collage, made to ‘visualise’ how the print might look..
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My desk scattered with the detritus of lino-cutting. Here the final design has been drawn to scale.
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A reversed scale drawing is transferred via carbon paper to the lino, and the cutting begins. I rub Conté pencil into the surface of the block as I go, to get a better impression of how the contrast between ink and paper will appear in the finished print.
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‘Frottage’… rubbing Conté pencil across a sheet of thin paper laid over the block… allows me to judge how the emerging shapes are looking. By holding the paper to the light and looking at the reverse side, I can see how the finished positive image will appear.
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The finished block awaiting ink and a first proof.
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The first proof.
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Tomorrow I’ll undertake a little cutting back and cleaning up of the background before I start editioning, but that apart, this is pretty much how the bookplate will appear. It measures 15 x 10.5 cm.
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… a copy of the paperback edition of Thaliad.
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Beth’s design for the book is beautiful. She has such a fine touch in the matter of how the poetry sits on the page, and she’s been most sensitive to the reproduction of my images, which have a lovely, silvery delicacy. The cover art too, has been handsomely reproduced, and will hopefully do its job of attracting the eye wherever the book is displayed in bookshops, or whenever an image of it is used for online reviews or promotional purposes.
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Now I await my copies of the hardback edition, which are currently en-route from the US.
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Meanwhile, after yesterday’s disaster of forgetting to reverse the image before cutting it, at my desk I’m underway with a new block for the bookplate that is to accompany the first fifty copies of Thaliad ordered, paperback or hardback. When complete, the plates will be forwarded to their new owners, ready to adorn their copies of the book. A little Christmas present from Marly, Beth and me.
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The drawing transferred in reverse onto the lino-block. This is the crucial stage that caught me out yesterday, when I transferred and then cut a positive image onto the lino.
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Scratching selected areas of the block with an etching needle will lend tone to the finished print.
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I regularly check on progress by making Conté pencil rubbings on thin paper placed over the block. These give a rough idea of how the work is shaping up.
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 