In place of a lesson, today, I have some exciting new images for my upcoming grammar guide, The English Tenses. I enlisted the help of a local artist to produce these, following suggestions from a number of beta readers – and I am sure you will agree these pictures will add a lot of character and energy to the book.
The artist, Bob Wright (whose website is currently unavailable, but can be reached here), has studied existing English learning materials to produce work that is at the same time very effective and professional, but also uniquely stylised. These are line-work previews, with colour to be added soon. Note: as these are still works in progress, and will be part of the final commercial release of the textbook, these images are watermarked. 
In English, we have the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. This means that when you see an image it can be much more clear than a description. It is always useful for vocabulary, as I could show you a picture of, for instance, a crown, and you would understand what it is immediately. If I described a crown as a circular metal adornment worn on the head, by rulers, it is not as clear.
For grammatical explanations, pictures are often less necessary. I try to make my grammar guides as accessible and easy to read as possible, with simple explanations and colourful examples – but even here a clear, bold picture can get the point across easier.
If you’re wondering how the images above could help explain the English tenses, well here’s a hint: The past perfect is often used in storytelling to provide background information. Main narratives are usually in the simple tense, so the past perfect can provide details of events that happened before the main narrative. Telling a story, we can therefore say: Jim arrived at the crime scene. He found a man who had been shot. In this example, the main narrative follows Jim, and when he arrived. The man was shot before Jim arrived, so the past perfect is appropriate. And that is exactly what one of the pictures shows.
Can you guess which one?
The English Tenses will be available soon – I am doing the final touches to the editing now (including adding these beautiful pictures).
