Bringing Your Story to Life Through Art
A brilliant way to bring a story to life is through visual art and images. This could be drawing, painting, collage or anything else you choose.
Artist Salina Jane gives some top tips and activities to get started.
Artist Salina Jane draws an interviewee
Draw your own story
Introduce yourself with a family coat of arms!
Coat of arms created by artist Salina Jane
It's your coat of arms, so can include as much or as little as you want.
Things you could add?
- Animals
- Flags
- Symbols
Salina's top tips for drawing your own story
- Include drawings of objects, items or symbols that represent you and your family story.
- You do not need to include everything, hints and suggestions to get people thinking are great, it makes for great talking points and a bit of mystery.
- Your drawings can be simple, think of emoji’s, they are a great place to start. They do not need to be really detailed or even realistic to tell your story.
- I make sure every single thing in the drawing has a reason for being there, its connected to the story even if it’s a small detail or an everyday object and other people don’t know what it represents, that’s ok too.
- You can use words in illustrations too, use a few, keep them short and meaningful, after all it is an illustration. Think carefully about what word / words you want to include.
A handy portrait
Draw round your hand – or someone else’s. Fill the hand with images, colours and symbols which represent the individual.
Sharing Our Lives: Thurrock Illustrated Stories
As part of the first phase of the project, artist Salina Jane created an illustration which weaves together the stories of over 50 local people to create a large-scale artwork.
How many stories can you spot? What inspiration can you take for your own pictures?
Find more artworks created through Sharing Our Lives here.
We’d love to see what you create! E-mail it to us at hello@togetherproductions.co.uk