Using the story of Little Red Riding Hood, Molly Bang explores visual communication by playing with simple geometric shapes and discussing their effect. For example, Molly creates Red as a small triangle but experiments with Red as a square, circle, or amorphous shape.

Later, Molly creates the wolf as as a longer, sleeker triangle with sharper angles that create a sense of danger. She turns the angles into curves to see the impact of angles. She changes the color of the wolf from black to muave. She adds different shapes and colors of eyes; and teeth.

In other words, she constantly experiments - and shows you the experiments - of different composition values and the mood they create. At the end, she summarizes what she learned as rules for composition.

Whether you draw, paint, or take pictures, this book will help you with composition.

38 of 38 found the following review helpful:


Photos tell more than thousand words-here is the answer why!  May 28, 2001 By Ruediger T. Korbel
Using the story of Little Red Riding Hood this book is focusing on the basic principles of composing images.

Reduced to the maximum and using simple colors and arrangements of basic elements like circles or triangles, the drawings as well as the short, precise text within this book are pointing out, how simple and complex arrangements within pictures work, transfer obvious (and hidden) messages, how philosophy and psychology witin pictures works. Therefor its a book telling the story why pictures may lie, may influence, may manipulate an observer even though obviously just showing "reality".

Whether you are taking photographs, drawing or designing - this book is a absolute must! A photo/image tells more than thousand words - here you will find the answer how and why. Great to read and watch, easy and fast to understand - even though dealing with a most complex matter.

Finally a personal statement and hint for an esthetes: if you like to possess a book with an outer shape and appearance that promises, what the contents keeps, than you have to buy the nice hard cover version instead of the cheaper soft cover version - it will pay off for sure.

19 of 20 found the following review helpful:


Picture This: How Pictures Work  Aug 01, 2003
I love this book and using it for teaching basic design ideas...a fellow teacher uses it in Psychology! The simple story of Little Red Riding Hood serves as the basis for discussion how line, color, shape, etc. work in art. Such a great idea...wish there were others of this type. I will be using it to teach the elements of art in Art History this fall.

16 of 17 found the following review helpful:


for grownups, too  Dec 12, 2004 By Danny Hillis
Don't be misled by the simple pictures and storybook style into thinking this a just a book for children. I have given this book to several adult friends, including some who are professional artists. We all learned something from Molly Bang's clear and compelling explanations of the principles of visual composition.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


A Must Have  Jul 18, 2007 By Grant Beaudette
I can't say I'm overly well versed in composition, namely because most books on the subject are so dense. But in Picture This, the author has found easily understandable way to show the basic fundamentals of art.

Rather than teach composition with diagrams drawn over old master paintings like some books, Molly Bang uses simple bits of paper to demonstrate how shape, color and placement can affect the mood of a picture. And once you understand these principles, it's easy to see how they can be applied to more complex artwork.

Bang's pace is very deliberate. Every change to her construction paper compositions is well documented and explained. It's that simplicity and directness that allow her to communicate such a large amount of knowledge in only 96 pages.

And don't let the short page count and the fact that this book is recommended for grade schoolers fool you. This is a book every artist should have her shelf.

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