Thinking about how things relate to each other, this project plays with the possibilities of juxtaposition and context. How to: Make a Shape Story.

Perfect for when a quick, simple, endlessly adaptable exercise is all you have the time and energy for. A wordless book.

Our habit of making sense of what we see, combined with a tendency to humanise non-human things, means that we embue these things with human characteristics. It sparks imagination and allows escape.

Perhaps scroll down through the project before you start, to make a call on whether you want your shapes to be the same size/type of paper/colour…or different.

You’ll need:

• A strip of paper
• Some paper: coloured, printed, painted, found…I’ve used book paper
• A glue stick
• Scissors or scalpel
• Maybe a pencil for drawing the shapes

Step-by-step:

First fold the strip in half.

Then fold the short ends into the middle, dividing the strip into quarters.

Draw eight circle shapes on your paper. (I drew around the glue stick lid!)

Cut out the circles.

Then cut out eight triangles. (I kind of wish I’d made them right-angle triangles, but hey ho.

Finally cut eight rectangles.

Here are the eight circles, eight triangles and eight rectangles ready for the next step.

Using one each of the three shapes, play around with how they might sit together.

When you’re happy with each mini-composition, carefully glue each shape in place.

I love how the texture of the print adds character but also remains neutral.

Keep gluing! (Maybe don’t do this where there’s a breeze, or your shapes might blow away.)

The strong (uncharacteristically for Scotland) sunlight adds the shadow of the shapes on the reverse side too.

How do you ‘read’ these shapes? Ask someone else for their first impressions and interpretations. You’ve learnt How to: Make a Shape Story!

This project was inspired by the extraordinary classic: Picture This: How Pictures Work, by Molly Bang, published by Chronicle Books.