How do we read images?
Watch: How Pictures Work
One of the images in the fairy tale slide show was from the illustrator Molly Bang. In this video, graphic design instructor, Jessie Tran, will take you through the images of Bang’s book Picture This: How Pictures Work and the creation of a visual Little Red Riding Hood variation.
Read and Watch: More Illustration Factors To Consider
The overall composition of a picture book is just as important as any single illustration.
How images and texts work together within that composition helps us read the images more complexly. We are reading with a visual vocabulary. Some of what gives us clues about what is being communicated are:
- Framing – Does the picture exist as a separate framed piece away from the text, perhaps putting us at a distance? Does the illustration go to the edge of the page without a frame? Does this make the reader feel that they are part of the illustration or that it is more casual?
- Line – As in the video above, Horizontal lines can indicate calmness and stability. Vertical lines can be used to indicate energy or barriers. Diagonal lines can indicate instability or even danger. Curvy lines indicate comfort and softness.
- Page Composition: Where is our eye drawn toward? What is being given preference visually? Where is the text in relation to the image? Is it separate or incorporated? Is the image a full page? A double-page spread? Or, are there spot illustrations amongst the text? With or without a full background?
- Color: The palette of a picture book helps us to read emotion.
With illustration, we also often read a depiction of visual body language in the characters.
Symmetrical Illustrations
In a picture book, the illustrations might be symmetrical meaning that the text and images are a match – for example, Dr. Seuss’s One Fish, Two Fish, Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s Goodnight Moon, or here, in Ezra Jack’s Keats The Snowy Day.
Complementary Illustrations
In many cases, illustrations are complementary or enhancing, meaning that they reflect the text, but that by reading the image we gain something new. Take a look at this image from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
When we read the image we see that Peter is not exactly listening, setting up the rest of the story. It enhances our understanding of why the next events happen.
Maurice Sendak uses a similar approach in Where the Wild Things Are.
Notice how we learn what kind of mischief Max is up to in the first few pages. As the story goes on Sendak changes the composition of the images to the text and they interact differently.
Counterpoint Illustrations
Illustrations and text can also appear in counterpoint. Sometimes, this is also called parallel storytelling. In this book, Phoebe Gilman’s Something from Nothing, see if you can follow the story of the mice under the floor.
The text never acknowledges the mice, but they have their own story.
Contradictory Illustrations
Sometimes the illustrations can in some way contradict the story or a part of the story. Two examples of this are Satoshi Kitamura’s Lily Takes A Walk and Marta Altés No!
Think about one of your favorite picture books (maybe the one you read for your first assignment) what can you say about the illustrations? How do they interact with the text? What kind of visual vocabulary is the illustrator using?
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