Oct 3, 2014

CLAXTON - Mark Cocker

Claxton is out this week and published by Jonathan Cape. We asked the illustrator Jonathan Gibbs to write a piece about working on this project.

“Early last year I met up with Mark Cocker and we walked down to the Claxton marshes, near to his home in Norfolk.  He wanted to show me a Bush Cricket, among other things. These were rather audible, all around us, and eventually we found one.

We talked about the book and how the illustrations should be suitably evocative and in the spirit of the writing. I believed that they should be clear, expressive and convincing, although not necessarily naturalistic. I make illustrations in the form of wood engraving, largely in black and white. Colour is used sparingly! This involves cutting an image into the end-grain surface of the wood, then hand-printing onto a Japanese paper.

I began with a series of drawings from life, memory, imagination and museum reference. The drawings formed the basis for the final cuts. I draw spontaneously, and strive for a flowing, linear rhythm which gives an underlying structure to the image. The creature to be depicted either emerges or is attached to this framework: it is a compositional device. I like to work into areas of the image in more detail, leaving parts of the block more open. Wood Engraving tends to be on a small-scale and is a somewhat technical process, I suppose, but it seems to liberate my imagination and I can work quickly and decisively. I try not to prepare too much, but engrave intuitively and directly into the woodblock.

About