Picture This: How Pictures Work

By Molly Bang

Molly Bang's brilliant, insightful, and accessible treatise is now revised and expanded for its 25th anniversary. Bang's powerful ideas—about how the visual composition of images works to engage the emotions, and how the elements of an artwork can give it the power to tell a story—remain unparalleled in their simplicity and genius. Why are diagonals dramatic? Why are curves calming? Why does red feel hot and blue feel cold? First published in 1991, Picture This has changed the way artists, illustrators, reviewers, critics, and readers look at and understand art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Aug 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781452154220

Molly Bang

MOLLY BANG has written and illustrated more than twenty books, including three Caldecott Honor winners: When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry…; Ten, Nine, Eight; and The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher. She lives close to the ocean in Massachusetts.

Book preview

Preface

I was quite happily making my living as a writer and illustrator of children's books. One day I was sketching objects around the house while an old friend, Leon Shiman, was visiting. Leon suggested I draw not just isolated objects, but whole views, whole pictures. The more I drew, the more I knew I was lost. As we looked at the sketches together and talked about them, Leon said, You really don't understand how pictures work, do you?

No, I did not. I didn't understand picture structure. I didn't even understand what picture structure meant. But could I learn?

I took a painting course with Sava Morgan, an artist who had taught for years in New York City. I read books on art and on the psychology of art. I went to museums and galleries to look at paintings and try to figure out what I felt about them and what the paintings were doing. And I decided to make pictures with my daughter's third grade class, hoping I'd learn something from teaching—as one often does.

Working with the children, I realized that I wanted to make pictures with clearly different emotions, but I also wanted to stay very simple. I decided to build an illustration from Little Red Riding Hood, since this story was familiar to everybody, and I knew I could make a scary wolf from a few sharp triangles. But I had to make a comforting picture first, to contrast with the scary wolf. I used simple shapes cut from four colors of construction paper—red, black, pale purple, and white. As the children gave me directions for how to make a picture scarier or more comforting, we realized something we already knew—something about pictures and feelings. We just hadn't defined it yet.

This was not a particularly helpful project for the third grade. They felt that cutting paper was too much like kindergarten, and they were third graders! They wanted to learn how to make things look real. But I knew I was on to something, so I took my scissors and my construction paper home and kept cutting, arranging, looking, and thinking. I began to see how certain elements in pictures affect our feelings.

Pretty soon I wanted to see if other people could apply to their own pictures the principles I had uncovered. It was clear that younger children understood them but were not particularly interested in this mix of geometrical abstraction and emotional expression, so I taught eighth and ninth graders and then adults. The pictures they made convinced me that anyone and everyone could use a few clear principles to build powerful visual statements: emotionally charged arrangements of shapes on a page.

I wrote up what seemed to be going on, then sent it to Rudolf Arnheim, the dean of the psychology of art in the United States, whose books I had found most helpful. Almost immediately I received a courtly letter back saying that he liked the book and had some suggestions if I didn't mind his scribbling on the sides of the pages. Mind? I asked him to please scribble, scribble away. He returned the manuscript with comments on almost every page, each one insightful or illuminating, and I incorporated every one.

Now, I felt I'd found something pretty fundamental here, but I didn't quite know what it was, so when I sent Arnheim the revised text I asked him if he could tell me what I'd done. He wrote,

What is . . . so special and striking about the style of your book is that it uses geometrical shapes not as geometry, which would not be all that new, not as pure percepts in the sense of psychology textbooks, but entirely as dynamic expression. You are talking about a play of dramatic visual forces, presenting such features as size or direction or contrast as the actions of which natural and human behavior is constituted. This makes your story so alive on each page. It gives to all its shapes the strength of puppets or primitive wood carvings, not giving up abstractness but on the contrary exploiting its elementary powers. . . . You are [also] taking the prettiness of the nursery out of the fairy tale story and reducing it to the basic sensations, taking the childlike-ness out of it but leaving and even enforcing the basic human action that derives from the direct visual sensation. It is what remains of Red Riding Hood if you take the prettiness out of it and leave the stark sensations we experience when we rely on direct and

Reviews for Picture This

[lainabourgeois · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that details the elements of a good picture book. It discusses the importance of images and is very interesting to read.

[hopemiller123 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

this book shows you all the awesome effects that you can make while mixing different colors and shapes in children's books. It compares how certain shapes look in different colors and how if you put them closer or further back on the page, what effect will happen. You can do diffferent colors that are tied into human emotion, for example some colors are calm and relaxing while other colors and feel intense or angry. It shows you the basics of how children's book authors make certain decisions when illustating their work.

[kcarline143 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a great book through its illustrations. Bang captures the attentions of the audience by association of previous knowledge. She analyzes the process of contrast with colors, movement and emotions through simple art. This book is great for all ages.

[sylliu_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this deceptively simple book, Molly Bang uses basic geometric shapes to show how pictures work: how simple principles of design can shape emotions and tell a story. Using cutout shapes to explain abstract statements such as "smooth, flat, horizontal shapes give us a sense of stability and calm" or "diagonal shapes are dynamic because they imply motion or tension," Ms. Bang walks the reader through the psychology of a picture. She shows how Little Red Riding Hood can be illustrated using these principles and simple shapes. She analyzes the emotional impacts of design elements such as composition, shapes, colors, contrast, and space. While much of this is intuitive, having it articulated in simple graphic form is invaluable to any visual artist.

[madamepince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Using the familiar story of Little Red Riding Hood to telegraph her points, Bang shows how modifying images create illustrations that reinforce the elements of the story. It's a great introduction to book illustration.

[auntieclio · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Simple approach to learning how to "read" art, easy to read. Actually not sure what I think about this one.

[ognjen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Cool and useful examples. Love the simplicity of it. Would recommend it to any creative person, not just illustrators or artists

[Razelle Burlas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Concise and nicely simplified methods of thinking for artists to play with the visual impact of an image.

[mykl8s · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

With simple geometric figures and a very few colors, Bang demonstrates how to draw emotion in a picture.

[bobbybslax · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very quick read, not just because it's interesting but also because it's pretty short. A significant part of the book is taken up by example pictures. Bang's writing is simple and to the point, and lets her enthusiasm for the material speak for itself.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This short treatise by famed children's book author/illustrator Molly Bang was a fascinating explanation, detailed but not didactic, of how and why the simple illustrations she devises work--how simple shapes and a limited color palette can produce powerful images, as well as how the illustrations enhance the story line and evoke reactions in readers.

Praised by the likes of David MacAulay, and used for students at the Rhode Island School of Design, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in art and illustration, and I highly recommend it.

4 stars

[kmajort · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

25th anniversary edition - this book will change the way you: read a picturebook (to yourself or to others), write a picturebook - at least one that will have illustrations, and it bleeds over into graphic design/layout.
Best textbook ever.

[photonegative · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While this book had some very interesting concepts, and provided some great insights into why certain presentations of shapes and images make us feel the way we do, I think it would have worked better as a lecture or TED talk, where the author could have shown us more explicitly the choices she made towards creating her final images. I also wish there had been more citation of her sources of information.

[melynnreadmond · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This informational storybook detailing Little Red Riding Hood is very enjoyable to read. It informs readers of the way illustrations can change the mood or what the reader infers from the image of the story. Throughout the story Molly Bang shows different scenarios through the use of different colors and shapes to change the meaning of the classic story. With this Bang makes this story interactive and engaging while bringing awareness to the way shapes and colors can make a story more intimidating, complete or peaceful. The big idea of this informative traditional fantasy story is that illustrations play a key idea in providing and explaining the meaning of a story.