SKETCHBOOK

BOOK INTERVENTION

BRIEF

Choose a book and transform it into an art piece by inter-

preting anything related to the book that you find interesting

and that affects you.

BOOK SUMMARY

The first step was obviously to choose a book. I randomly

picked Brighton Rock by Graham Green from a charity

shop having no idea what it was. Picked it by its cover.

Pinkie is the leader of a small criminal gang in Brighton.

He’s only 17-years old but much more ambitious and cruel

then the others in the gang. Pinkie murders a newspaper em-

ployee, named Fred Hale, for involvement in the murder of

their previous leader Kite. A girl named Rose becomes a pos-

sible whiteness to the murder and Pinkie starts to woo her

with a hidden agenda to get her not to testify. Ida, a woman

who fancied Fred Hale, is suspicious with the circumstances

surrounding the murder and soon gets convinced Pinkie did

it and tries to find proof in order to frame him. She tries to

get Rose to realise that Pinkie only uses her, but Rose, who’s

starting to really fall in love with Pinkie, refuses to believe

her. Pinkie gets more and more paranoid and stressed and

even kills one of his own gang members, Spicer, in fear of

him telling someone about the murder. It gets more impor-

tant for Pinkie to keep Rose quiet now that the stakes are

raised and therefore decides to marry her seeing that a wife

cannot testify against their husband. As the book progresses,

things become worse and darker and the events ultimately

lead up to Pinkie trying to talk Rose into committing suicide

but end up falling off a cliff himself.

RESEARCH

After I’d chosen my book I immediately began researching

and writing down words that where strongly associated with

it. I looked in to everything from the story itself by watch-

ing the 2010 film version I’d found out existed and reading

summaries, to the life of the author Graham Greene as well

as tons of stuff I could draw associations to. The words I

came up with where: pier, beach, gangsters, confectionary,

gloomy, fog/mist, scar, cliffs, record, love, hearts, camera,

god, religion, hell, catholic, bipolar, communism, Russian

roulette, cheating, women, espionage.

Early on I also decided not to look into other students ex-

amples of book interventions and just let myself to whatever

the research and inspiration led me to. Since I’ve never done

anything like this for my everyday life as more of a designer

I thought it would be interesting to se what I ended up with

not trying to resemble more artistic people.

Graham Greene suffered from depression and made sever-

al suicide attempts when he was young. The book Bright-

on Rock is also dark and reflects, I think, in some sense

the mood of the authors early years. I found the strongest

subjects in the book to be those of unrequited love, denial,

betrayal and evil.

INSPIRATION

From the beginning the gangster theme really stuck with me

and I read a lot about old gangster films and when I googled

pictures of it I stumbled upon Film Noir, which I think

looks simply great. Film Noir in my opinion has a really

mini malistic style to it, which is perfect for me since I’m no

skilled fine-art artist, and uses a lot of contrast and low-key,

dark imagery. This also seemed very suitable for the theme

and subjects i found Brighton Rock to be about.

I don’t really now how I came to think about it, but I

thought it would be interesting to try and transfer the Film

Noir feel from the gangster movies to the book. Since I’m

not an experienced painter I just decided I would use oil

pastels because they seemed to deliver a thick layer of colour,

which I needed for the look I wanted. Also I could make it

look nice without having to paint a lot of detail but a more

rough style, which was suitable. The choice of oil pastels

became an inspiration itself since I was kind of locked to a

certain style.

So in short my idea was to bring the Film Noir feel to the

book and try to get the dark theme of the book and the au-

thor to shine through and hopefully evoke some feelings in

the viewer. Or at least make them fascinated by the colour.

SKETCHES & METHODS

When I had my idea of how I would do the book inter-

vention I just started listing key scenes from the book. I

also wrote down some quotes from the book that I thought

would add to the mood of the piece. And I do love typo-

graphy. Then I sketched up the scenes, kind of like a story-

board and then I just transferred those images to the book.

In the book I then sketched up the scenes in pencil before I

went crazy with the oil pastels.

FINAL ARTWORK

CONCLUSIONS

In the end my piece isn’t really about trying to say some-

thing, it’s more about trying out stuff to see if my idea was

possible and if I could catch the mood and feel I sought

for. I wanted it to be dark just like the story and the authors

early years and the feelings my piece might evoke will be

whatever the observer read into it.

That said I want to make clear that the piece didn’t exactly

turn out the way I thought it would. I don’t think the oil

pastels made it dark enough (the book’s text was still visible)

and perhaps I should’ve made it even rougher then I did.

Also the pastels made it really hard to enhance any sort of

details. As I’ve mentioned I really fancy a minimalistic style

but when it’s almost impossible to even follow a straight

line because of the pastel keep changing shape it’s a bit too

much. If anyone disagrees and thinks this just added to the

piece I’m more then happy.

ANTON LARSSON

ADVANCED VISUAL CREATIVITY

UWS 2013