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depictions of social phenomena as ‘seen’ from high above; rather, these compositions tend to balance introspection with contextualisation. In keeping with social scientific traditions that stress the importance of reflexivity, Cristancho and Helmich caution that researchers ought to remain cognisant of their reactions to rich pictures and the potentially strong emotions that drawing can unearth for participants. Although this is certainly wise advice, it is worth emphasising that rich pictures may foster reflexivity among drawers as they achieve ‘perspective’ on structural problems and their own embeddedness in larger institutional or cultural systems. For educators committed to praxis and the cultivation of critical consciousness, rich pictures could be applied as pedagogic tools to help students make sense of the inequalities, traumas or ethical challenges they encounter during their training. Realisation of one’s emplacement within these problems may be a more effective call to action than conventional teaching styles that emphasise the transmission of depersonalised facts. The prospect of ‘sharing perspective’ with others and the pursuit of sociopolitical transformation through art have also been longstanding interests of critically inclined social scientists. Following these lines of scholarship, we can imagine variations on the rich pictures method where these evocatively reflexive drawings become teaching aids to promote intersubjective awareness and 853 a 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education; MEDICAL EDUCATION 2019 53: 848–857 commentaries