Rene Gruau

I have been looking at an artist called René Gruau. René Gruau loves women. With great humour, he defines Glamour and Sensuality by revealing the feminine universe, made of luxury, frivolity, futility and narcissism as the most natural thing in the world.

In the big sleep it is also obvious that Marlowe's attention is captured by most of the female characters who attempt to seduce him. You also notice his slight obsession with women's legs as he is very observative of them and often describes the legs of a woman he is talking to and compares them with each other's.

I might possibly have a theme of legs going on with my book cover but I'm not sure yet. Maybe i'll have a pair of legs going down the spine of the book, so I looked at the several drawings of legs by Rene Gruau. I also quite like the femme fatale and elegance theme which goes on throughout the book and Gruau has also done a lot of paintings and prints portraying femme fatale. I drew up two moods boards of his work which I thought could inspire my designs the most.
I then took my favorite images which I thought I could develope some sketches from that relate to my design.

Here I did a quick sketch of these legs that Rene Gruau painted as I thought that the pillow the woman was holding would be a good place to put the blurb. I also like the curves used in the image created by the legs which look very elegant and draw your eyes down to the ankles where you then noticed that one of her shoes is falling off which can look very cheeky and seductive. This image reminds me a little of pin-up or show girls from the 1940's era of Los angeles. The colour red features strongly in this painting as it connotes with passion, seduction and blood which is one of the main themes throughout the book. The Black white and red scheme create contrast and the fact that the legs are painted using skin colours give it a sense of life and sexual temptation.

In this sketch I have made changes from the original image by changing the ball of netting in the middle to look like a bloody orchid instead. I have made the woman look more like the character Vivian Regan from the book as she is the most elegant of the femme fatale characters, and it is said that orchids represent beauty and luxury. I have decided to make the orchid bloody because the two petals on the left and right side look similar to lungs, and in the book old man Sternwood (Carmen and Vivian's father) has some sort of lung cancer.

For this sketch I have clothed the male figure in a suit and I have tried to make it resemble Marlowe. I have also added a pack of cigarettes to his hand and a silhouette oh his hat on the top right edge of the chair. After doing this I though that it was probably a bad idea to make the hat into a silhouette and that it should actually match with Marlowe's suit so that it looks like a separate object rather than a part of the chair. This was another idea for the blurb of the book though I might Flip this image so that it corresponds well with the front cover which I have decided I might use the first pair of legs I drew for. I like the original image because the figure of the person in the chair looks relaxed which I thought could easily be associated with Marlowe after a case closed. I also like the fact that it hides the face and identity of the person in the chair so that the person reading the book can relate to the character more and easily put themselves into Marlowe's shoes.