Painting in Abstract

Learn to capture the beauty of the natural world in paint and mixed media with this inspiring book.Carole Robson shares her enthusiasm for the natural world and how to paint it in the abstract. This book guides the reader through simple combinations of media such as watercolor, gouache, acrylic and Indian inks in combination with other media for a dynamic and modern effect for your artworks.It offers strategies for developing concepts and improving design, with a chapter devoted to using the formal elements - line, shape, color, tone, texture and surface pattern.The book guides you through selecting a scene and how to organize your painting to achieve success. Carole Robson is a dynamic teacher who uses various media in combination with paint to show you how to show the natural world in all of its beauty.

Books on abstraction appear now with some regularity and that means publishers are getting beyond the basics. This one is particularly useful as it comes from an experienced practitioner and covers both creative and practical aspects of the genre.

Carole works in a good variety of media that include watercolour, gouache, acrylic and ink as well as pencils and pastels. You won’t, therefore, feel constrained by a single one that isn’t perhaps your first choice. It’s also worth reporting that you won’t get to the materials section for 52 pages – you’ve been through all the looking, seeing and thinking before you start to get the brushes out.

Carole works with natural subjects – flowers, landscapes and water and her style is well beyond representation, while always retaining the essential essence of what is depicted. The abstraction comes from simplified forms, use of colour and technical manipulation. She includes plenty of basic instruction, exercises and demonstrations that explain her approach as well as developing your skills.

Overall, this is one of the most thorough and complete guides to abstraction I’ve seen.

What happens when you combine the properties of mixed media with a focus on the beauty of the natural world? You get the new book, Painting in Abstract, by English mixed-media artist Carole Robson. Through finished paintings and short exercises, she delves into watercolor, gouache, acrylic and inks and their impactful effects on one another through various techniques. She also offers strategies for developing concepts and improving design, with a focus on line, shape, color, tone, texture and surface pattern. If you want to take a more experimental approach to your work, Robson offers a strong foundation.

This is practical, mixed-media art book, illustrated with finished paintings and short exercises that encourage an experimental approach to painting the natural landscape. Carole Robson's aim is to inspire readers with her own enthusiasm for art and, as a teacher to help you achieve your own artistic goals. The book guides you through simple combinations of wet media such as watercolour, gouache, acrylic and Indian inks. It goes on to examine and include other media and techniques; exploring media that combine happily, and those that resist each other to create interesting and unexpected effects. It also offers strategies for developing concepts and improving design, with a chapter devoted to the formal elements line, shape, colour, tone, texture and surface pattern that can be harnessed to produce impactful work.

Art, Edgar Degas reminded us, is what you make others see. Abstraction, therefore, is a made-up language in which the artist communicates in terms we're invited to understand. To put it more simply, it is your opportunity to invite the viewer to share your emotional reaction to the subject in front of you. If that sounds like nonsense, this probably isn't a book for you, which is fair enough and I won't waste any more of your time. Still with me? Be glad, for this is a book which takes its subject and its readers seriously. Where a lot of books on abstraction are project-based, Carole gets under the skin of not just the how, but the why. Her paintings are firmly planted in natural forms but use all the technical possibilities of mixed-media work to wring meaning out of what are always more than just splashes and runs.

Carole Robson studied for degree and post graduate qualifications at Central St. Martin's School of Art and subsequently freelanced as a book illustrator for major London Publishers. She worked on a wide variety of commissions and her illustrations are published worldwide.Carole is a mixed media painter and art tutor, who exhibits in London and the South East of England. Her paintings are driven by strong feelings about ecology and man's impact on the environment. She has visited the Kent Wildlife reserve, Marden Meadow regularly for over thirty years, which is a rare, unimproved hay meadow connecting us back to a pre-industrial past. Distillation of these observations, memory and imagination form the basis of many of her landscapes. While inspired by all nature she particularly enjoys weedy patches and the fragility of weathered plants, which retain a kind of nobility in their structure even in their dry, decaying state.Carole is a mixed media painter with a first love of watercolour. She is experimental, combining media, resist techniques and a variety of mark making. In the last few years Carole has brought digital art into her practice and is frequently re-inspired by the new colour combinations or abstractions achieved.Carole lives in Laddingford, Kent, UK.

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