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.
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.