I used Anki for French and am currently using it for Spanish. It's TERRIFIC. It's the best method for brute-force memorization of vocabulary and conjugation. While it's a bit lengthy to set it up, the creation process actually helps with the memorization.
Remember to only use photos where you can, dont use english words in it. The whole key is to skipping the "translation" step in your brain. Learn by thinking of the action, not by thinking of the english word and its translation. Getting rid of that "lookup" step is the key to getting good at learning a new language.
As for using pictures only: there are studies that show that pictures and mnemonics improve recall, but AFAIK there are no studies that say that using your native (or another known) language is bad.
The idea that our memory is organized as a mapping native-language-word -> platonic-concept or word->image->concept is just an analogy, we don't have any evidence that our brain works like that.
A trap that many learners fall into is assuming that words and grammatical structures map 1-to-1, and so they try to form sentences by translating word by word. But that's orthogonal to memorizing via pictures. Translation is ok but it must be mostly in the target-language->native-language direction.
FWIW my native language is Portuguese but I've studied 2 languages (Japanese and Hebrew) using mainly English, which is my second language.
This technique might be helpful for the extremely basics, but what is something meaningful you would put on a card for something like hope or dignity that wouldn't be easily confused? I find pictures helpful but usually I use them to illustrate the example sentence and not the word itself.
I agree your original language is a crutch but what I've found has made get better faster is native language translations of the word. It takes a while to get comfortable doing that, but once you start doing it often enough it works very well.
> I find pictures helpful but usually I use them to illustrate the example sentence and not the word itself.
And this is why you are supposed to create your own flashcards. Everyone learns differently and your self-guided learning is no different.
Personally I use pictured even for abstract stuff, I just try and find a picture that says "hopeful" or "amazing" for me and then I use that as my picture since I figure it'll forge the connection.
I believe using your own language is fine (please see my other comment).
That said, you can still use pictures together with example sentences. You don't have to find a picture that unambigously means "hope". It can be a picture of the Red Sox or your $favorite_underdog for instance, the dvd cover of a movie related to hope, etc. The point is to improve recall, not "skip the translation step".
Remember to only use photos where you can, dont use english words in it. The whole key is to skipping the "translation" step in your brain. Learn by thinking of the action, not by thinking of the english word and its translation. Getting rid of that "lookup" step is the key to getting good at learning a new language.