I’m a visual thinker. I think in images. Visual thinking, also called picture thinking, is thinking through visual processing. Visual thinking has also been described as seeing words as a series of pictures.
Picture thinking is evolutionary, meaning it grows as the thought process adds more concepts. It is a type of creativity because you’re using your imagination to create imagery in your mind, like abstract visualisation. It allows me to visualise things without seeing them.
Visual thinking requires periods of questioning, brainstorming, playing and self-reflection. It needs time to sprout and grow yet can come quickly at a moment's notice with a little imagination and inspiration.
When words transform into vivid mental images, concepts become more tangible, and connections between ideas become clearer.
What does all this mean? It essentially means, that once I’ve written the manuscript for my book, the illustrations come to my mind's eye. As I ponder the text for each page I consider, in mind images, how I could go about creating an illustration that would best represent the written word.
I sift through these mind images, discarding some, filing others. I merge, combine, and manipulate these images in unique and often surprising ways (even to me!) to better organise and reflect the information I want to project.
This ability to picture scenes in rich detail and to process them holistically enables me to create artworks that, when complete, come together to create a visual narrative.
As a visual thinker I’m able to create art that is narrative, and as a result, the power of the visual image to ignite imaginations and evoke emotions, can be maximised in the story telling process.
Each individual artwork I create to illustrate my stories goes through a long process, from those first images that I visualise, through to recreating these images on paper. They unfold and evolve, are added and manipulated, and finally finished off with detailing.
The result is illustrations that are interesting and full of surprises, and books that children find both engaging and fun. As much fun as I have creating them I hope.