Drawing a story in three pictures
Art & Design · Key Stage 1 · The School
One picture, or three?
One drawing shows a single moment. Three drawings, in order, can show a whole story. Picture one: before. Picture two: during. Picture three: after. Together they share something a single picture cannot.
Planning before drawing
Choose a simple experience: planting a seed, baking, a trip to the park. Decide what happens first, next, and last. Say the three parts out loud before drawing any of them. Planning first stops the drawings turning into three random pictures.
Keeping something the same across all three
Keep one thing the same in every picture, like the same character or the same colour hat. That link is what tells a viewer the three pictures belong together, rather than being three unrelated drawings shown side by side. It is the thread that connects them.
Planting a seed, in three pictures
Picture one: a hand pushes a seed into soil in a pot. Picture two: the pot sits on a sunny windowsill, a tiny green shoot poking through. Picture three: a small plant with leaves stands in the same pot, in the same spot. The same pot appears in all three, so a viewer's eye can follow it and understand the seed grew, without a single word of writing needed anywhere.
Sharing what happened
Show your three pictures to someone without explaining them. Can they follow the story just from looking? If they can, the drawings did their job. If not, look for the missing middle step. A silent story can still work well.