Telling Stories Without Telling Them: The Power of Abstract Illustration
- Galina Bakinova
- Aug 15
- 4 min read
Part 1. Ball on the waves.
We are used to the fact that illustration is most often a storytelling through visual images, but what if I say that you can tell a story through sensations while maintaining visuality? What if the illustration doesn't have a single image of the character, no clear plot line, but the viewer sees both the character and the plot? This is impossible, you say, but I will answer that this is quite possible.
The Balance & Movement illustration series started as a simple illustration project where I was given a color palette and a very abstract goal – to draw something minimalist, stylish and character-free, suitable for website page splash screens.
All such illustrations are usually neutral and certainly not intended to carry any artistic value. For example, how many seconds will a website visitor stay on the “Error 404” page? A second? Two seconds? All such pages are usually faceless and boring, so boring that the visitor runs away from there, barely having time to read the inscription to the end.
The story of my illustrations began with this page. I asked myself, why not make it interesting. But what can you come up with as an illustration that depicts emptiness? And then I thought that emptiness itself can be filled, that I can work not with objects, but with sensations. This is where my work with associations and metaphorical images began.As an image of emptiness, I had an association with drifting in the space of an endless ocean. It was decided to make the image of the character as abstract as possible, so I came up with an orange ball. A round, volumetric, geometric figure of a warm color, what could be more abstract? Moreover, it was the warm orange ball that became the metaphor of the character and the main character of the illustrations of the entire series.
It was decided to make the environment flat and schematic. For the Error page, I drew a ball floating in schematic thread-waves on a featureless beige background. The main thing for me here was not the storyline, but the feeling of being lost that the user usually experiences when he or she realizes that he or she has not found the page they need. The beige background and thin white lines coped with this task quite well.
Then I started using the image of waves as a metaphor for instability and movement. By changing the background and wave colors to a rich, deep, dark green, the same illustration went from being one of lost wandering to one of struggle and overcoming.
Waves can be more than just a metaphor for movement in the ocean.
By adding a shadow and placing the ball inside the waves, I got a completely new illustration, now it showed the ball moving forward on a solid surface. The balloon in the illustration seems to be slowly but confidently overcoming difficulties. The waves, which now represent obstacles, part before it, allowing the ball to calmly overcome its path. Confidence and calm were achieved by using a neutral background and the air around the ball. The waves do not touch the ball, but rather seem to go around it, diverging, freeing up space in front of the ball.
The waves themselves without the ball can convey a feeling of emptiness, serenity. Only due to the texture of the background I got a metaphorical image of desert dunes, with a view of them from above.
Then I decided to move away from the associations with waves and thought about how else the ball could move. The spiral movement seemed very aesthetic to me if depicted from above. The illusion of infinity of movement is successfully achieved through the image of a spiral.
Another way to convey the dynamics of movement was the way to visualize the ball's track in space. By drawing a track after the ball and in front of it, I got the feeling that the ball was rolling down the track and, conversely, bouncing on it.
The series of illustrations with the ball gradually turned into a short story about it. In this narrative there is neither an image of the hero nor the purpose of his movement. The abstract geometric figure does not depict the character literally, but becomes a visual accent in the illustration. The background, which in classical illustration sets the context, is devoid of narrative here.
The whole meaning for the viewer is formed from the sensations caused by the illustrations.
The resulting set of illustrations is a set of abstract compositions, not connected by plot, but united by emotional logic and at the same time telling an abstract story quite successfully.
To be continued.
The full project of illustrations is at the link.
Author: Galina Bakinova
Date: 15.08.2025
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