Greg Ruth, A Pirate’s Guide To Recess
Is there any aspiration more human, and more powerful, than the art of storytelling? As illustrators, we are admittedly very biased! After all, what is illustration if not the art of visual storytelling?
Some people are naturally adept at storytelling. They will captivate a room and have their audience hanging on every word. They know just the right moments to pause, to hush their voice, to yell, to inject tension or humor. But another person can tell the exact-same story and clear the room out!
Visual storytelling is no different. A thousand illustrators can approach the same work, each with their own unique storytelling voice (again the idea of personal vision), and each one will come out with a different interpretation, a different read on the story. Some of these reads will invariably be more successful than others. The ideas we will be approaching in this module will help us to be sure our interpretations work. We examine the intimate relationship between story and visual art, and look at how our all our artistic decisions affect our ability to tell a great story in our own unique voice.
You’ve heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words?” In great narrative illustration it’s absolutely true!
––Illustrator Greg Ruth, from Stories: A Love Letter
source: Muddy Colors
