PICTURE THIS

A revised and expanded 25th-anniversary edition of Bang's go-to text about visual perception, or “how pictures work,” delivers sublime design and picture-book–art commentary for readers and artists alike.

In the preface, Bang writes that her work explores “only one question: How does the structure of a picture—or any visual art form—affect our emotional response?” Her step-by-step cut-paper illustrations of scenes from “Little Red Riding Hood” attempt to answer this question by experimenting with basic art elements: color, placement, size, shape, and space. Though much of Bang’s original text remains the same, the revision offers 12 principles of visual perception arising from this experimentation rather than the 10 that earlier editions included. The book’s generous trim size and thoughtful design and typography also provide a more immediately accessible presentation of her ideas. A new section, “From Intent to Execution,” examines four illustrations from Bang’s Caldecott Honor book When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) to illuminate their use of the principles examined on earlier pages. A closing image from Dawn (1983) stops short of deconstruction to invite readers to do this work, and final pages provide prompts to support learning the principles by working with cut-paper illustration.

A must-have book for anyone wanting to learn or teach about art elements and principles and their connections to (picture book) art and visual perception.