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Explanations of visual narrative have been fragmentary, in semiotics, social semiotics, linguistics and media studies, for example. Semiotic and media studies approaches overlook the significance of experiences of different visual media. Linguistic approaches overlook the relationships between visual perception and imagination. Semantic approaches have analysed particular historic instances, but are often unsystematic. Explanations of drawing and narrative remained a particularly significant omission. To explain drawing is to explain depiction and embodiment, visual perception and imagination, sign systems, language and writing, as part of a systematic account of the functional relationships between them. A Theory of Narrative Drawing provides a systematic account by explaining experiences of drawing. It focuses on those areas of study overlooked in the existing scholarship and establishes a system of relationships between them and between areas in which explanations already exist. In doing this, it substantiates a wide academic dissemination of insights.

A Theory of Narrative Drawing explains areas of study overlooked in the existing. These include descriptions of the drawing body, the causes and consequences of drawing, the institutional relationship between ideas and percepts, the role of conventional ideas in establishing the status of drawings, a model of narrative, the remediation of the narrator and a critical evaluation of visual language theory. It concludes with a series of demonstrations of the output’s new theory of narrative drawing, in the form of questions answered by making drawings.

A Theory of Narrative Drawing substantiated an international programme of academic, peer-reviewed dissemination: one authored publication, three book chapters, one journal article, three conference papers, one academic seminar and eight items of media commentary (reviews in academic journals).