Representing a situation or solving a problem pictorially means doing so using drawings or representations of actual objects. A visualization of the situation and solution takes place rather than an actual concrete experience of the situation and solution.

If one person has thirteen blocks of concrete and another person has eight blocks of concrete, how many do they have together?

Rather than actually dealing with heavy blocks of concrete, one could use a diagram of a cube to represent one block of concrete.

Drawing thirteen unit cubes together with eight unit cubes and counting the resulting number of cubes represents both the original problem of 13 + 8 as well as the result of 21 (or twenty-one blocks of concrete).

Note that 13 + 8 could be represented pictorially in many different ways. The following animation (using base ten blocks) pictorially shows a different method of representing the solution to the problem.

Solving problems pictorially can often result in a wide range of methods for possible solutions.

As well as pictorially, most situations or problems can also be represented concretely and symbolically.