49 pages • 1 hour read
Molly BangPicture This: How Pictures Work
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “From Intent to Execution”
Bang discusses the illustrations in her children’s book When Sophie Gets Angry—Very, Very Angry…, which follows the emotional journey of a young girl named Sophie as she navigates overwhelming feelings of anger. Through her illustrations, Bang conveys the various stages of Sophie’s emotional arc, from her initial outburst of fury to the eventual comfort and security she finds in nature and within herself.
Bang emphasizes the importance of deciding on the emotion in every picture before beginning the illustration process. Using four two-page spreads from When Sophie Gets Angry, she explains how she used various visual principles to convey specific emotions in each illustration.
The first spread depicts fury. Bang explains that when children experience a strong emotion, they often feel like it is an external force too big to contain. To convey this idea, Bang depicts Sophie’s fury as a large, red, angry silhouette behind her. The floor is angled to enhance the sense of movement, while a cat in the lower right corner of the two-page spread redirects the viewer’s attention back to Sophie. Bang also points out the significance of the book’s gutter, the split in the middle of the book where the pages join, which makes every page in a picture book a diptych. Even though the illustration is a single image, Sophie is at the center of the left panel, while her fist of rage is centered in the right panel, affecting the viewer’s perception of both aspects.
Next, Bang shows a two-page spread that depicts Sophie’s transition from anger to sadness. In this scene, Sophie appears smaller, and the colors are darker. Traces of her former fury are represented by the red outlines around the trees and Sophie herself. The author explains that these outlines, while not meant to be realistic, infuse different energies into each picture and separate or relate objects to each other or Sophie. The bending trees and ferns in the image sympathize with Sophie’s sadness, and her isolation is reinforced by her size and colors and the plain background behind her. Bang suggests that readers can experiment with outlines when creating cutout pictures by placing different colored paper behind the figures.
The third example shows a feeling of expectancy as Sophie stands at the base of a large beech tree, whose trunk and branches extend across the two-page spread. Sophie and the background trees are aligned and angled toward the upper right branches, urging both her and the reader to move into a new emotional space. The horizon plays a crucial role in this image, bending to become perpendicular to the tree’s direction, grounding the scene and embracing Sophie. Bang explains that this positions the tree trunk so that it creates a bridge across the horizon, leading Sophie to a new emotional world.
In the last example, Bang illustrates Sophie’s contentment and contemplation as she sits nestled in the branches of the beech tree, looking out onto a serene landscape with a bay, waves, and a sailboat. The tree’s branches curve protectively around her, representing her newfound control over and understanding of her emotional state. The distant curve of the beach points back to Sophie, further emphasizing the sense of protection and self-reflection. Bang explains that the tree is an outward representation of the inner steadiness that Sophie has discovered within herself.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Finally, in Defense of Instinct”
In this very brief chapter, Bang discusses one of her favorite illustrations from her book Dawn, which she adapted from a Japanese folktale called “The Crane Wife.” The story revolves around a shipbuilder who rescues a Canada goose, who later returns as a woman and becomes a sail weaver. The shipbuilder marries her, and they have a daughter named Dawn. The woman weaves a set of sails for her husband that is soft and strong. A rich yachtsman commissions the shipbuilder to build a racing yacht with sails like the “wings of steel” (125). The wife initially refuses, stating that it would take too much out of her, but the husband insists, and she reluctantly agrees. She asks her husband to promise not to enter the room where she is weaving. However, at the last minute, he breaks his promise and discovers a Canada goose plucking the last feathers from her breast. The goose then flies away, never to return.
The illustration Bang highlights portrays the wealthy yachtsman and the husband scrutinizing the yacht’s blueprints as the wife watches from the doorway. The frame is intended to evoke the yacht club’s wallpaper and the trophy the boat will vie for. Bang created this image well before writing Picture This and before she fully grasped the principles outlined in the book. Nonetheless, it endures as one of her most beloved images, and she now understands why. Although she forgoes a detailed analysis of the picture, she invites readers to consider how the book’s principles are employed in the illustration and how they resonate with their own emotions.
In closing, Bang emphasizes that while the tools presented in Picture This are ways to articulate the instincts shared by all individuals, she stresses that artists must ultimately rely on their intuition to guide them in crafting their illustrations.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
The Emotional Power of Visual Elements continues to be a central theme. Bang delves deeper into how the arrangement and interaction of visual elements can evoke specific emotional responses in the viewer. In Chapter 3, she focuses on the use of color and shape to convey Sophie’s intense emotions in the book When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… Bang demonstrates how the strategic use of red, for example, symbolizes Sophie’s fury, while softening colors and shapes represent her gradual calming down. The transition from simple shapes in the first chapters to published illustrations here develops the book’s educational through line, showing more advanced examples now that the basics have been covered. It also builds ethos, bolstering Bang’s expertise by showing concrete examples of her success.
The theme of The Picture as an Extension of Real Life is further developed in Chapters 3 and 4 as Bang illustrates how the principles of visual storytelling can create immersive and emotionally resonant experiences for the viewer. Through her analysis of the illustrations in When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry…, Bang demonstrates how the careful orchestration of visual elements can mirror the character’s psychological and emotional states, inviting the reader to empathize and engage with the story. For instance, as Sophie experiences sadness, “Above her the trees bend in sympathy with her bowed form, as do the ferns below her path, so the whole picture has a sense of the weight of sadness and evokes the same sympathy in the reader” (119). Alongside Sophie herself, the whole picture is an expression of Sophie’s inner emotions.
In Bang’s illustrations, conveying emotion is more important than creating a “realistic” depiction. In Chapter 3, she says:
In nature, when we look at an object against a dark background, our eyes create a nimbus of light around it, while the edges of an object look darker against a light background. You’ll notice that artists use this effect in most any good “realistic” Western painting. The Sophie pictures are not meant to be realistic and don’t use this technique. The outlines are there to infuse different energies into each picture and to separate the objects, as well as to relate them either to each other or to Sophie (119).
Rather than adhering to realism, Bang uses colored outlines in her illustrations to convey emotions and energy. For example, Sophie and some of the trees are outlined in red, “showing traces of her former fury” (119). In the third illustration, the lower tree’s branches appear to be curving down and toward Sophie: “The whole picture is urging her, and us, into those upper right-hand branches” (121). This also deviates from reality, using a personifying gesture to symbolize healing and encouragement. Likewise, in the fourth image, Bang points out that “The tree is clearly the same tree as in the previous picture, but now the branches curve up to cup and enfold her, while from above another branch curves over her head, protecting her” (121). Bang adjusts the perspective and the elements in the picture to match the scene’s emotions rather than sticking strictly with “realistic” depictions.
