conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Michelle, Cat, Hat with the genre: Romance, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Picture This'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Picture This about Mark, Twain, York with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ller treats the whole panorama of history past and present with the bravado of Mark Twain in one of his sassier moods." The New York Times Book Review&lt;br&gt;A keenly satirical look at the world of art and museums by the author of the modern classic, Catch-22.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Picture This
  No, I did not. I didn't understand picture structure. I didn't even understand what "picture structure" meant. But could I learn?
  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.
  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.
  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,
  But I thought of all this much later. I first decided to represent Little Red Riding Hood as a little red triangle and then asked myself, "Do I feel anything for this shape?" The figure is not exactly fraught with emotion, yet I knew I felt things about it that I didn't feel for others.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This picture has an even greater sense of movement because the triangles get progressively smaller and because the outline of the whole group is triangular, or arrow-shaped. When I first played with the shapes, I cut them all the same size and had them more nearly parallel to each other. They still felt as though they were moving, but the result was quite boring and heavy.
  Pictures are usually read as though there is an invisible, emotional horizon line stretching across the middle of the space and dividing it into top and bottom.
  When we are high up, we are in a stronger tactical position: we can see our enemies and throw things down on them. Down low, we can't see very far; things might fall on us and crush us.
  If we identify with an object that is in the upper half of a picture, we tend to feel lighter and happier. If we want to show the spirituality of an object, we tend to place it high up. Again, this is due to the force of gravity: objects that are higher up give a sense of floating or flying or otherwise escaping the gravitational pull of the earth.
  Think of some of the expressions we use every day to show that we're feeling happy or have done well: "Top o' the morning to you!" "She's at the top of the charts/the class/her form," "top man on the totem pole," "top gun," "top dog," "top-drawer," "top-notch," "things are looking up," "I'm high as a kite," and so forth.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Do not glue down the pieces until the whole picture really works. "Okay" is not good enough. You ask, "How do I know when a picture 'really works'?"
  In each case, it seems most helpful to represent a situation that would particularly affect you personally. One of the most powerful "bird attacking victim" pictures I've seen was made by a woman who had been attacked by birds while rock climbing. One of the most powerful "parent and child with water" pictures was made by a woman who for the first time had left someone else to care for her ten-month-old child. One of the most moving pictures of a figure in the wilderness was made by a man who had just returned from two weeks walking alone in the desert.
  Playing with cut paper forces us to concentrate on the basic structure and on how this structure affects our emotions. But this is the basis for all our visual art forms, the foundation on which the rest is built. Once you understand how these principles work with paper, you can use them in any medium.
  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?