Review of 'Painting and Understanding Abstract Art' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Excellent, clearly explained book on both painting and understanding abstract art - but with an idiosyncratic approach to colour theory. Even with that caveat - I highly recommend this book.
The approach to creating abstract art is broken down into neat single techniques, each with its own tutorial, which are simple and well chosen. Combining them is also demonstrated. This same approach is taken to study and analyse specific artists, again with useful tutorials.
There is a very useful timeline on the stages in development of abstract art.
My only warning is that, when reading this book (which, to repeat, I recommend), it's worth being aware that the section on colour theory/colour mixing contains an approach, devised by the author, that rehashes existing concepts of colour theory/mixing and replaces existing terms and colour wheels with his own. I do not personally think this is useful.