Picture This: How Pictures Work

About the book

Molly Bang's brilliant, insightful, and accessible treatise is now revised and expanded for its 25th anniversary. Bang's powerful ideas remain unparalleled in their simplicity and genius: Explore the intricate and thought-provoking ideas that Bang brings to Picture This including thoughts 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. Why are diagonals dramatic? Why are curves calming? Why does red feel hot and blue feel cold? She asks the right questions to get your wheels turning while the illustrations and thoughtful designs bring the words to life. * Explores the mix of geometrical abstraction and emotional expressions, plus how a few clear principles can be used to build powerful visual statements. * Encourages you to answer the question, "How does the structure of a picture-or any visual art form-affect our emotional response?" * Includes powerful imagery and beautiful illustrations to help readers feel connected to the text. First published in 1991, Picture This has changed the way artists, illustrators, reviewers, critics, and readers look at and understand art. Molly Bang has authored and illustrated more than three dozen books and has won three Caldecott Honors, a Kate Greenaway Honor, and a Charlotte Zolotow Award, among other accolades, in her long career as a writer and artist. Picture This makes an imaginative and inspiring gift for any artist or loved one who is interested in design.

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Quotes

"Picture This is the Strunk and White of visual literacy. A must for anyone interested in reading and understanding images." -Brian Selznick, author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret---

Molly Bang Biography

Molly Garrett Bang (born December 29, 1943) is an American illustrator. For her illustration of children's books she has been a runner-up for the American Caldecott Medal three times and for the British Greenaway Medal once. Announced June 2015, her 1996 picture book Goose is the 2016 Phoenix Picture Book Award winner – that is, named by the Children's Literature Association the best English-language children's picture book that did not win a major award when it was published twenty years earlier.

Biography

Bang was born in Princeton, New Jersey. Her education includes attendance at Wellesley College, reception of a Master of Arts degree from the University of Arizona (1969) and Harvard University (1970).Bang began writing children's books after a failed stint as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. At first illustrating folk tales, she turned eventually to her own stories. The ability to carry emotion in pictures is of particular interest to her; her one book for adults, Picture This (1991) is specifically about the practical ways pictures work. Her wordless picture book The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher is notable for its use of negative space and the way Bang contrasts bright colors against grey.In the 2000s, Bang and her daughter Monika Bang-Campbell collaborated as illustrator and writer to create three picture books featuring Little Rat, a girl rat who learns with courage or practice to sail, to ride a horse, and to play the violin.She lives in California, previously she resided in Massachusetts.

Books

As writer or editor and illustrator

The Goblins Giggle, And Other Stories (1973) Men From The Village Deep In The Mountains and Other Japanese Folk Tales (1973) Wiley And The Hairy Man: Adapted From An American Folktale (1976) The Buried Moon And Other Stories (1977) The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (1980) Tye May And The Magic Brush (1981) Yellow Ball (1991) Ten, Nine, Eight (1983), a counting book Dawn (1983, reissued 2002) The Paper Crane (1985) Delphine (1988) Picture This: Perception & Composition, foreword By Rudolf Arnheim (1991); revised as Picture This: How Pictures Work (2000) One Fall Day (1994) Chattanooga Sludge (1996) Goose (1996) Common Ground: The Water, Earth, And Air We Share (1997) When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry ... (1999) Nobody Particular: One Woman's Fight To Save The Bays (2000) Tiger's Fall (2001) My Light (2004) In My Heart (2005) Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring The Earth To Life (2009), by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm All of Me! A Book of Thanks (2009)

As illustrator only

The Old Woman And The Red Pumpkin; a Bengali Folk Tale, translated and adapted by Betsy Bang (1975) The Old Woman And The Rice Thief, adapted from a Bengali folktale by Betsy Bang (1978) Tuntuni, The Tailor Bird, adapted from a Bengali Folktale by Betsy Bang (1978) The Demons Of Rajpur: Five Tales From Bengal, translated and adapted by Betsy Bang (1980) David's Landing, by Ju ... Read full biography