What I'm Learning About Shapes in Storytelling (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

I've been exploring using shapes as a visual storytelling tool for this month's Creative Illustration Curriculum, and you can join me for my quiet, real-time art process in the video above.

Beautiful Bluebells will be getting a voice-overed version soon where I talk about my process as I go 💖

This month's focus is exploring how the shapes of characters and objects impact visual storytelling, and the challenge is to draw a character (animal or human) using mostly rounded shapes, and then draw another version of them with pointy shapes to see if you can give them a different personality.

So I drew a little mouse character - once with mostly round shapes, and again with much more triangular shapes.

Shape theory suggests that a more rounded character will feel soft, warm and approachable, whereas a more pointed character will feel more unpredictable, and perhaps cunning.

The only thing that's different between these two characters is their shapes, and I do think that they feel quite different as characters.

I did a similar exercise with a simple face to see how the base shape would impact their character. I'm not sure if I immediately apply different personalities to these three faces, but they certainly feel like unique characters.

Key takeaways:

I'm glad to have spent some time on this topic, because as a picture book artist I draw a lot of characters, and this is now another tool I can use to aid my visual storytelling.

Like most art fundamentals, on its own the shape of a character might not be obvious, but it can certainly be used to help support a visual story that you want to tell. Next time I want to show that a place or character is a bit scary, I'll certainly be more likely to use pointy shapes, and likewise when I next want to show that a character is friendly I'll be more likely to use rounded shapes.

At the very least I think that exaggerating shapes is an interesting tool to help create characters who clearly look different, which is a helpful visual storytelling tool in itself and something that I'd like to use more in my picture books.

What do you think you'll draw this month?

💖 Mimi

PS. Don't forget to download your pdf guide for this month's curriculum if you haven't already!