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The pastels and poisons within Agatha Christie

July 05, 2021

Sally Dunne discusses how her illustrations are the result of an intense, messy process – but with a real attention to the details still evident in Agatha Christie's Crooked House.

1. She loves colour ...

... But she chooses to work in pastel precisely because it offers a limited palette. ‘It stops me going over the top! Soft pastels have a romantic, painterly quality, which I love. I use heavyweight paper with paper stumps to direct and smudge the pastel, rubbing out, slowly building up the layers. The process is very tactile. Messy as well – I am constantly cleaning my hands!’

Draft illustration by Sally Dunne

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1. She loves colour ...

Final illustration

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2. Her studio is in her family home

... in County Laois, Leinster, where for the last few months she has been working on the artwork for the Folio book of Agatha Christie’s Crooked House.

‘Christie is wonderful to work with because she gives you just enough details about the characters without making you feel constrained in your imagining. When I first read the books, I instantly had a clear colour palette in my mind – quite dark. The story has a slow build up but then a lot happens in a short space of time; as I went along some scenes stood out to me, which, luckily, are nicely spaced out.’

3. Each illustration takes her three to four days of intense work

And there are seven in the Folio book, not including the cover.

‘I don’t think it is giving to much away to say the method or murder is poison. I was out for a walk thinking about the cover when I saw some vibrant foxgloves – digitalis. And straight away I could see the cover illustration.’

Draft illustration by Sally Dunne

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3. Each illustration takes her three to four days of intense work

Final illustration: "‘You went and sneaked to the police,’ she said"

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4. The small details matter

All illustrations are checked exhaustively for period detail. Following her research on other Folio crime fiction titles, Sheri Gee, Folio’s Art Director, took a close look at the numberplate for the detective’s car.

Using some extremely helpful information found online, Sheri checked exactly what type of car numberplate format would have been in use during the period time setting of Crooked House – and even what letters and numbers should likely be included for the model of car. Sally then incorporated this information into her final artwork.

In this draft artwork, the numberplate showed 'INN 9191' - but at that time it would have been three letters and three numbers, and 'I' isn’t used as it is an ambiguous letter and could be mistaken for a number one

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4. The small details matter

In this second draft artwork, the numberplate is correct in the amount of numbers and letters but Sheri felt that '999' for a police car was a bit too much of a pun!

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4. The small details matter

Final illustration:

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Agatha Christie's Crooked House

A mysterious poisoning. A house full of eccentric characters. And one amateur sleuth racing to fit all of the crooked pieces together – Crooked House is the epitome of an Agatha Christie novel

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The pastels and poisons within Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's Crooked House