This is a cover illustration by author toolkit titled 'Visual Storytelling Journey'. The design features a playful watercolor checkered background with the artist's palette and brushes arranged around it. In the center, children gather around a teacher who is reading a picture book, creating a lively storytelling atmosphere.

Summary

Welcome to my toolkit, ‘Visual Stories: Express Yourself Creatively’! This OER aims to help you capture special memories visually, reinforce the details of moments, explore emotional expression, and develop new pathways of self-reflection in visualising narratives, whether you have a foundation in art or not. It also provides an opportunity to share and reflect with other learners.

Have you ever experienced moments when emotions are hard to put into words, but wanted to find a unique way to express them?

Is there a creative way for you to revisit your story and find resonance and strength in it?

Artist Pierre Bonnard, in his classic After the Shower (1914), captured the cozy moments after his fiancée's bath in a delicate style, conveying the love and warmth between him and his fiancée.

‘After the Shower’, 1914. Pierre Bonnard (1967-1947). Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art. Available at:https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/59473 (Accessed: 30 Nov 2024).

Art is often used to record those unforgettable moments in everyday life. In his classic After the Shower (1914), Artist Pierre Bonnard captured the cosy moments after his fiancée’s bath in a delicate style, conveying the love and warmth between him and his fiancée. Marianne Hirsch points out that art is an excellent way to express and heal unspeakable traumas, except for documenting happy moments (2012). Vietnamese-American illustrator Thi Bui explores family history and pain through her graphic novel The Best We Could Do (2017). Her parents experienced the Vietnam War personally, and the trauma of the war has long haunted the family, affecting Bui. The pain she has never personally experienced, but feels deeply, is an unspeakable emotional burden for Bui. Through the paintbrush, Thi Bui successfully translates those unspeakable emotions into a visual language and achieves a profound reflection on trauma in it (Gusain and Jha, 2021).

As art educator Zander (2016) puts it, visual narratives can help individuals reflect on their experiences by creating and sharing stories that evoke emotional resonance, deepen understanding of personal experiences, and foster social connections in group interactions.

Next, let’s embark on a journey of visual exploration～

If you don’t need these supports, please ignore them and swipe down to start our activities!

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

What do you need to prepare?

No drawing skills are required—just bring some paper and a pen to start! If you want to explore further, you can also use watercolours, coloured pencils, markers, or even cardboard for a more creative touch. The focus is on expressing your story, not perfecting your art. So, relax and have fun with the process!

Step 1 Choosing a Story (2 minutes)

Take a moment to reflect on your life and choose a memorable and profound story. This could be a joyful moment, a challenging experience, or a seemingly trivial but significant event.

If you are having trouble deciding, the following questions can help you clear your mind:

- What is the bravest thing you have ever done?
- Is there a moment that made you feel warm or supported?
- Is there someone you miss in particular? What did you go through together?

Tips for choosing a story

1. Keep it simple: You don’t need a long or complex story. A single fragment or moment is enough.
2. Make it personal: Choose a memory that has special meaning to you. Even the little things in life can be moving.
3. Follow your intuition: Often, the memory that comes to mind first is the most emotionally resonant.

Step 2 Writing a Description of the Event (4 minutes)

Now that you’ve chosen a meaningful story, it’s time to describe the experience. Take 5 minutes to describe your chosen experience in 6-10 sentences, highlighting the key moments when you felt emotionally changed – such as nervousness, surprise, relief or pride. You can write it down or record it with your phone, whichever is easier and faster.

WHY?

According to Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory, we have a limited working memory and can only process a limited amount of information at any given time (1998). By limiting the number of sentences, you can help reduce the cognitive stress of expressing complex emotions and events, and also reduce the difficulty of the next step, ‘visualisation’！

KEY POINT

Focus on emotional turning points – these are essential to creating a vivid story and are essential to the visual storytelling in the next step.

The image shows a memory of the author in nine sentences, centered around feelings for her hometown, emphasizing the significance of growing up and belonging.

Step 3 Telling stories with simple symbols (10 minutes)

Next, take the story you have previously written or recorded and transform it into a series of simple symbols or sketches. Each sketch corresponds to a sentence, extracting the core emotions and events of the sentence.

Visualize your story without the need to pursue drawing skills or visualization, just focus on the abstract expression of your main emotions or key things. There is no “right” or “wrong” symbol, just one that expresses your emotions and story.

Two examples of visualized storytelling. Example 1 shows nine colorful illustrations, each numbered, depicting scenes such as mountains at sunrise, a tree, rain, a rainbow, and people under a tree. Example 2 consists of black-and-white sketches, also numbered, showing similar scenes with a focus on line art and simplified shapes.

Two examples of visualized stories

You can use the following to assist in this step:

1. Use resource of symbols to help create:

If you are not sure how to express something or an emotion in symbols, you can use a free library of symbols, such as The Noun Project. Search the page for keywords to find concise shapes that are flexible enough to use in your sketches. You don’t need to purchase the symbols—simply use their abstract forms as a reference to help visualize and simplify your ideas effectively.

2. Emphasize the use of lines:

the style and form of the lines can be a good reflection of the mood, some examples are shown below.

Eight abstract black-and-white illustrations representing different emotional moods through line and shape, labeled as: Delighted, Anger, Heartbreak, Relaxing, Calm, Restlessness, Heaviness, and Horror. Each image uses distinct visual patterns to evoke its respective emotion.

Example of Line Mood

Step 4 Collage and ordering (3 minutes)

Arrange your sketches in chronological order and highlight the changes in each stage through adjustment, annotation, etc., so that your visual narrative is more layered and emotionally expressive.

Collage and order the sketches so that it coheres as a story.

Tips:

1. Connect sketches with straight or curved paths to enhance the flow of your narrative.
2. Differentiate emotions and importance, and emphasize key plot points through folds, colours, marks, etc.
3. Put the important sketches in the visual centre and the secondary sketches around to form a hierarchical narrative structure.

Step 5 Share and Reflect

Finally, we can share and reflect on our visual narrative with our peers through a simple game.

Game steps:

1. 1. Groups of 3 exchange their drawings without explaining their meanings in advance.
  2. Team members take turns guessing which picture is the key emotion sketch and the real emotion behind it.
  3. After everyone has guessed, the original author reveals the answer and exchanges with each other.

The purpose of this quick and fun game is to stimulate more interaction and help participants re-reflect on events from a visual perspective in a relaxed atmosphere.

Thank you for your participation!

To better improve and optimize the experience, I invite you to complete this short questionnaire. Your feedback is very important to me! The questionnaire consists of only 5 simple questions and will take you only 1 minute to complete.

Click the button below or scan the QR code to get started!

https://forms.office.com/e/xvS7eF7jqD?origin=lprLink

Reference

Bui, Thi. The Best We Could Do : An Illustrated Memoir. New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2017.

Gusain, Abhilasha, and Smita Jha. “Trauma, Memory, History and Its Counter Narration in Thi Bui’s Graphic Memoir the Best We Could Do.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 12:5 (2021): 873–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2020.1806890.

MARIANNE, HIRSCH. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. Columbia University Press, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/hirs15652.

Philadelphia museum of art. “After the Shower.” philamuseum.org, n.d. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/59473.

Sweller, John, Jeroen J. G. van Merrienboer, and Fred G. W. C. Paas. “Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design.” Educational Psychology Review 10, no. 3 (1998): 251–96. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1022193728205.

Zander, Mary Jane. “Tell Me a Story: The Power of Narrative in the Practice of Teaching Art.” Studies in Art Education 48.2 (2007): 189–203. https://doi.org/10.2307/25475819.

Sketching Your Memories: A Visual Storytelling Journey / Open Toolkits by Kneel, Mulholland: Drive! is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Posted by s2677889

14 November 2024

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Sketching Your Memories: A Visual Storytelling Journey

Summary

Have you ever experienced moments when emotions are hard to put into words, but wanted to find a unique way to express them?

Is there a creative way for you to revisit your story and find resonance and strength in it?

As art educator Zander (2016) puts it, visual narratives can help individuals reflect on their experiences by creating and sharing stories that evoke emotional resonance, deepen understanding of personal experiences, and foster social connections in group interactions.

Next, let’s embark on a journey of visual exploration～

If you don’t need these supports, please ignore them and swipe down to start our activities!

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

What do you need to prepare?

Step 1 Choosing a Story (2 minutes)

Take a moment to reflect on your life and choose a memorable and profound story. This could be a joyful moment, a challenging experience, or a seemingly trivial but significant event.

If you are having trouble deciding, the following questions can help you clear your mind:

What is the bravest thing you have ever done?

Is there a moment that made you feel warm or supported?

Is there someone you miss in particular? What did you go through together?

Tips for choosing a story

Keep it simple: You don’t need a long or complex story. A single fragment or moment is enough.

Make it personal: Choose a memory that has special meaning to you. Even the little things in life can be moving.

Follow your intuition: Often, the memory that comes to mind first is the most emotionally resonant.

Step 2 Writing a Description of the Event (4 minutes)

WHY?

KEY POINT

Focus on emotional turning points – these are essential to creating a vivid story and are essential to the visual storytelling in the next step.

Step 3 Telling stories with simple symbols (10 minutes)

Next, take the story you have previously written or recorded and transform it into a series of simple symbols or sketches. Each sketch corresponds to a sentence, extracting the core emotions and events of the sentence.

Visualize your story without the need to pursue drawing skills or visualization, just focus on the abstract expression of your main emotions or key things. There is no “right” or “wrong” symbol, just one that expresses your emotions and story.

You can use the following to assist in this step:

1. Use resource of symbols to help create:

2. Emphasize the use of lines:

the style and form of the lines can be a good reflection of the mood, some examples are shown below.

Step 4 Collage and ordering (3 minutes)

Tips:

Connect sketches with straight or curved paths to enhance the flow of your narrative.

Differentiate emotions and importance, and emphasize key plot points through folds, colours, marks, etc.

Put the important sketches in the visual centre and the secondary sketches around to form a hierarchical narrative structure.

Step 5 Share and Reflect

Finally, we can share and reflect on our visual narrative with our peers through a simple game.

Game steps:

Groups of 3 exchange their drawings without explaining their meanings in advance.

Team members take turns guessing which picture is the key emotion sketch and the real emotion behind it.

After everyone has guessed, the original author reveals the answer and exchanges with each other.