Agatha Christie - Summer Sketchbook Work

These are my drawings based on 'Death on the Nile' which I have read. 

Linnet Ridgeway was the first and crucial murder victim in the story but a misleading parallel storyline to her murder is the theft of her pearls. They are also a symbol of her wealth and status. I drew them as well in her hand with red nail polish on which is also relevant to the story. 

 One of Dr Bessner's scalpels was stolen and used to kill Linnet Ridgeway's maid, Louise Bourget.

Dr Bessner's scalpels

A camel - relevant to Cairo (a bit cliché).

Portrait of Agatha Christie - I tried to keep the line work really simple and not over complicate the image. I felt this captures her attitude to writing because her stories are easy to read and follow and although there is enough information to make it interesting, it isn't confusing. I also put this into photoshop and added some basic colours. 

I am doing these drawings while reading 'A Murder is Announced', I am drawing the objects which seem significant as I work my way through the book. I don't know yet whether these are relevant to the murder or not or whether they have been thrown in as red herrings. 

Wilting violets - there seems to be particular attention drawn to the fact that a vase of violets are wilting which is unusual in a usually well kept household. 

Dora Bunner (Bunny) takes some aspirin for a headache. The aspirin have been replaced with poisoned pills and she dies in her sleep - the tablets belonged to Mrs Blacklock and were by her bed. 

These are some drawings of medicine bottles which are one of the motifs I have picked up on. Poisons are commonly used in Christie's crimes and her extensive knowledge of this is from when she was trained as a dispenser during the war.

These are two very different styles, I think the watery gouache captures the glass best but I also like the scribbly quality of the blue pencil drawings - its a bit different and not what I would usually do.

 Agatha Christie was born in Torquay which is in the English Riviera. I have a good knowledge of this area as it is where the majority of my childhood holidays were. The houses on the estuary banks are what I seem to remember, they all seemed crowded as if stacked on top of each other because they are on such steep hills. I have drawn some of these kinds of houses from reference - I didn't spend too much time on this. I know the area is relevant to Christie but these drawings specifically don't show much of a connection.

Agatha Christie - 25 Pieces of Information

I have chosen Agatha Christie as the author I would like to progress with. Out of the three authors I have researched, I have found valid points for why I would want to work with all of them but the thing that clicked with Christie's books was that they inspired me to draw. I wasn't finding it a chore to read her work and I was becoming engrossed in her stories. 

I have ordered five more books from Amazon and want to get stuck into these as soon as possible. I enjoy drawing objects and observation drawing which is something that her literature will allow me to do due to the significance of the clues to the crimes that she includes. Also, her descriptions of characters, both of appearance ands personality, will hopefully push me to work with character in some way. I haven't enjoyed working with character yet but I am hoping her work will encourage me to be persistent with this and maybe realise that I can do it. 

Finding out more about Christie will be crucial to the development of this project. She is a mystery herself as she has done very few interviews and never went into detail about her personal life. I want to treat this whole project as a mystery of my own and hopefully pull information from various sources to piece together who she was as a person, almost like solving one of her murder mysteries. 

5 Quotes / selected pieces of writing

• ‘In everybody’s life there are hidden chapters which they hope may never be known.’
• 'People should be interested in books, not their authors.'
• 'There's nothing like boredom to make you write.'
• 'Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.' (The Mysterious Affair at Styles)
• 'What good is money if it can't buy happiness?' (The Man in the Brown Suit)

5 Motifs

• Poisons - the most popular method of murder in all of Agatha Christie's novels.
• Money - the most popular motive for the murders in her novels, this could have stemmed from some financial difficulties in her family when she was younger and may also be why most of the characters in her stories are wealthy and of higher classes. 
• Guns  - guns are often used or mentioned in most of her murder mysteries, it is an iconic symbol of murder  and is particularly relevant to Christie because as a child she had a recurring nightmare of 'the gunman' which potentially sparked her interest in crime writing. 
• Trains - this was probably Christie's primary method of travel which is why it is mentioned a lot in her novels, numerous murders were committed on trains. 
• Mousetrap - this is the name of her longest running play, the script was first released with no title on the front page, just an image of the mousetrap and a splash of blood. It could also be a symbol relevant to the rest of her novels to show that the killer gets caught in the end. 

5 Characters

• Hercule Poirot - a Belgian detective, a fictional character created by Agatha Christie who features in over 30 of her crime novels. 
• Jane Marple - more commonly known as 'Miss Marple', a fictional character based on Christie's grandmother. Marple is an elderly spinster, not actually a detective, but manages to act as one to solve the murder mysteries. 
• Linnet Ridgeway - a young, rich and beautiful woman who is one of the murder victims in 'Death on the Nile', I think that the status of her character summarises what Christie bases the motives of her murders on. 
• Ariadne Oliver - a recurring character featuring in 8 novels, Christie admits that the character is loosely based on herself and although she never directly solves the crime, she often unintentionally leads the detectives towards the solution.
• Mary Westmacott - Agatha Christie wrote six novels under this name, she used them to try and understand herself and the world and left the stories unresolved. It would be interesting to see this name as her mysterious hidden character. 

5 Locations

• The English Riviera - the general area where she grew up, various locations in this area feature in her stories sometimes under different names, includes Torquay where she was born. 
• London - where she over to start a family, a strong contrast to the villages and small towns of where she was raised.
• Greenway House - her holiday home in Galmpton near Brixham. This is where her notebooks were found and the layout of the house and gardens is picked up on in some of her novels. 
• Grand houses of the middle/upper classes - a lot of descriptions in her novels to work from.
• Locations abroad - (Istanbul, Egypt, Jerusalem, St Lucia, France, etc..) Agatha Christie liked an adventure as much as she appreciated her home in Devon. 

5 Pieces of information

• Studied to be a classical musician but was too nervous to perform. 
• In the process of qualifying as a dispenser Christie gained a good knowledge of medicine and poisons. 
• West and theatres dimmed their lights in memory of Agatha Christie on the day she died. 
• She has only been outsold by William Shakespeare and the Bible. 
• Agatha Christie had limited education in her early years, her mother wouldn't even allow her to be taught to read until she was 8 years of age.

Cormac McCarthy Research

I watched a short Oprah interview with Cormac McCarthy which was his first ever television interview. This didn’t really inform me about McCarthy as a person much and this is something I think I will have to fine in written form. It has inspired me to read one of his most famous books, ‘The Road’. So far I have only read ‘The Sunset Limited’ which was a play and quick to read, so it will be good to experience a different writing style. 

Notes from cormacmccarthy.com

The Cormac McCarthy Society provided a lot of information about his life, facts, figures and dates but showed very little about him as a person. They use the phrase ‘that’s more or less what we know’ at the end of the biography page which suggests that it is going to be difficult to find out about McCarthy as a person. 

Notes from an interview with The Wall Street Journal

This gave me a bit more insight into McCarthy as a person. Some points that I particularly found intriguing include that he worries about the future of the human race. This is a parallel I can draw with my research into George Orwell, a fear of being controlled by a greater power, in this case, technology. 

McCarthy seems to have a very strong bond with his son. He talks about him a lot and speaks very highly of him as a person. 

McCarthy seems like a man who enjoys quiet which will explain his lack of involvement with turning his writing into films, his reluctance to participate in screen interviews and the way he has generally keeps his personal life quite private. 

Another interesting point he made in this interview was that he believes that too much of the arts will decrease their value. I think there is a deep argument to be had here because more arts can encourage it to thrive but I also do partially agree with how we can value something less if it is so readily available to us in so many forms. 

Next Step - I want to read 'The Road' as I think this will help me to gain a better insight into the relationship McCarthy has with his son as he hints that a lot of it is based on his personal experiences with his son. I think the father-son relationship could be a heart warming topic to explore visually but I don't really know what the tone of the book is yet.

George Orwell - BBC Documentary

I watched the BBC Documentary, George Orwell - A Life in Pictures, today to try and learn more about the author of Animal Farm and 1984. These are the notes I made. 

A list of Orwell’s likes and dislikes were read at the beginning of the documentary and it was clear that he enjoyed traditional things. His dislikes were linked to new inventions and a world that was progressing - it was clear that he didn’t like the direction in which the world was progressing. 

He described writing as a ‘horrible, exhausting struggle’ and he was ‘driven by a demon’ to write what he did. I think George Orwell saw it as his duty to the world to let people know what was happening and what would be in store for them in the future. 

I think the bedwetting situation at boarding school was a key point in Orwell’s life because it was the moment he realised that he would continually be punished for something out of his control. He says he realised he was living in a world where even though he was trying, it was impossible to be good. 

I think living in poverty and residing with the poor brought him back down to earth from his self confessed snobbery at Eton. Living with proletarians and sort of becoming one himself has heavily influenced his later works. 

When working for the BBC ministry of information in the war, he was a voice for radio propaganda. This is something which must have heavily influenced 1984 because of the telescreens and the constant watching of and messages to the public by Big Brother. 

He wanted to fuse politics and art to get the message out there. I think this was to target all classed rather than just the upper classes who were more commonly associated with politics. 

It is clear that Orwell didn’t like the way that the world was changing as he described the future as a boot stamping on the human face. 

I did find this documentary very interesting and realised that George Orwell did more than just write, he was a lot more active in trying to make a change than that. He seems like an unusual yet extraordinary man who was more than willing to put himself out there and stand up for what he believed in. Although all of these thoughts are going through my head are very much in support of George Orwell, I am struggling to think of ways that this could become visual. Politics and history are not my strengths and although I would be willing to learn about them to further understand Orwell, I don’t think I would find this aspect too enjoyable. 

Agatha Christie Research - ITV Documentary

The Mystery of Agatha Christie - ITV Perspectives (2013)

I watched a documentary about Agatha Christie to try and learn more about her as a person rather than just as a writer. The documentary was fronted by David Suchet who is famous for playing the role of Hercule Poirot. I made notes in my notebook as I was watching. 

I found it really interesting to see how events in her childhood and early adult life could so easily have affected what the choices she made with the story lines of her novels. For example, the recurring nightmare of the gunman was probably one of the most violent things she encountered at this young age because she described her childhood as very happy and rather sheltered. Also the fact that the gunman usually appeared at special occasions or parties is relevant to her novels as a lot of the time, the murder takes place in conjunction with a social event or on a journey. 

I was surprised to learn that Agatha Christie never had a proper education and that she taught herself to read and write. She seems like a very intelligent woman and I presumed that she would have has a good quality education as a child. 

I think her experiences during the war also played a part in her writing, especially the knowledge she received when training as a pharmacy assistant. Her books have been commended by professionals at the levels of accuracy she writes with about drugs and poisons. She was a very knowledgable lady and this showed in the particular attention she payed to the details in her writing. Also the people she met in the war inspired the kind of characters she created.

The disappearance of Agatha in 1926 after she found out about her husband’s affair is a point in her life which remains very much a mystery. I can understand why people claimed this was a publicity stunt for her crime novels but I think the reasons are much deeper than that and that it was an escape for her. I am hoping to read some of her books under the name of Mary Westmacott because I think this might reveal more about what she was thinking in this period of her life. 

She was more than just a traditional English lady, there was something different about her as she craved adventure. 

I feel embarrassed to admit I had never heard of ‘The Mousetrap’ which is apparently the longest running play and has broken so many records. This documentary has made me really intrigued by Agatha Christie’s life. There is so much more to her than her writing and she has experienced a lot. I am in agreement with the title of this documentary as I think as a person, she is still a mystery but I think this might allow me to build up a picture of her using the information I have - almost like piecing together individual clues in a crime case. 

Agatha Christie - Death on the Nile

While I was on holiday in Majorca, I read Agatha Christie’s ‘Death on the Nile’. I have seen the screen version of this in the past but it was quite a while ago so I’d forgotten most of it. At first I found it very confusing because there were so many characters to keep track of, and I had to make a real effort to get all the different connections between characters straight in my head to start making sense of the storyline. This got me thinking about a visual diagram of everyones relationships with each other, almost like what you would see in a detective enquiry (which is also relevant).

Agathie Christie describes things in a lot of detail which helped me to build up pictures of each character - this is most evident when a new character is introduced because she uses their description to hint at their background and social status. Character design is not one of my strong points and I think this is because I struggle to build up the persona of what I want this character to be like. Maybe working with a readymade description of someone might make it easier for me to represent the appearance I need. 

I found the isolation of all of these characters being on a boat really interesting as it is almost like the book is set in its own little world where only these people exist. 

I also picked up on numerous motifs in the book, there are plenty of individual objects involved in the murder investigation which could be used to make some interesting imagery. Also, the location of the events in the story could be good to work with, the boat for example and Egypt and the Nile. 

Cormac McCarthy - The Sunset Limited

Today I read the play ‘The Sunset Limited’ by Cormac McCarthy. The play only consists of two characters, one named Black and one White. These titles of the people in the play immediately made me understand that the characters were going to be polar opposites and have differing opinions, and this is true, Black is an ex-convict and White is university professor. The play is a discussion/debate about how people view their lives and the quality of it, it speaks of religion, happiness and how a person’s experiences changes the way they think about things. White is suicidal and in the morning prior to this conversation, Black had stepped in to stop him ending his life via the mythical Sunset Limited (the train that takes you to the edge of the world and keeps on going), a metaphor for the subway train he was about to jump in front of. 

I found this book really engaging and it made me think about different people’s perceptions of happiness. I think this could be a really interesting topic to explore with a visual project and it could be expanded to look at how peoples opinions differ on other topics such as religion and whether there is something beyond the world we live in. 

The character names of Black and White triggers the theme of opposites which is something that could easily be translated into imagery, it also made me think about symmetry and how something can be symmetrical in shape but the contents are entirely different. This is something I think I need to explore with my sketchbook to see if I can translate this onto paper.