The term "pictorial rules" is correct and usable in written English.
It is used to describe a set of rules or regulations that are illustrated in a visual manner, such as a flow chart or diagram. For example: "The factory's safety program consisted of written and pictorial rules to help employees understand the protocol."
He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic.
The rules of pictorial perspective include the implication that the higher the base of a terrestrial object appears in a picture, the farther away it is along the ground (Gibson, 1950), and thus that "height in the field" is a pictorial cue to distance that represents proximity to the horizon (see Sedgwick, 1980).
However one construes the notion of representation here (and any crude pictorial theory can be ruled out), it is clear that conceptual representation was taken to involve some level of generality, and so there is an obvious problem where singular concepts are concerned.
Unlike the sophisticate Gauguin, the man-of-the-people Rousseau, who became an artist in his early forties, had next to no grasp of conventional pictorial craft; he didn't know the rules well enough to break them.
Having defined the pictorial grammar of Neo-Plasticism, Mondrian bent the rules, composing variations and taking the idea to minimalist extremes, with a single triangle of colour and two intersecting lines, for instance.
Some technical analysts, having seen a promise of pictorial order, go further, arguing that there are even more basic rules governing these shapes, rules that grow out of what they consider basic laws of nature and geometry; some get even more fantastical, invoking the principles of astrology.
This solution replicates Guttman and Levy three-dimensional cylindrical structure almost completely, and it offers further differentiation of the visual mode into geometric and pictorial modes and implies that the Block Design subscale relates to the "rule inferring" category.
Some form of monochromatic brush drawing with ink may have been practiced in China as early as the 2nd millennium bc; but the earliest pictorial work is in lacquer or on bronze vessels, contemporaneous with Alexander the Great (ruled 336 323 bc).
