Realistic Abstracts, Kees Van Aalst - Book Review

This one is 160 pages long, but it’s one of those square shaped ones with smaller pages and a bit more white space so, content-wise, is probably comparable to an all too typical 128-page book.

I was hoping this would have more to say about abstract art techniques than that Rolina Van Vliet book sitting on my shelf, and I can confirm that it does.  Big time.  Whereas Rolina glossed over the "elements" of an abstract, Kees covers them in detail.  He talks about seven elements (line, tone, texture...) and seven principles (unity, contrast,...) and about how you can apply each principle to each element in a painting.  That's 49 things to think about if you take it all as gospel, but that's not realistic for me.  Instead, it gives me things to think about and way so to identify what's wrong with a picture that I might not otherwise be able to see (e.g. not enough unity of colour).  This is all illustrated with lots of examples.

There are also some short demos in the book.  I normally hate demos but these were useful.  You can see how these paintings start purely abstract with areas left white but then gradually morph towards something more realistic (say buildings or flowers) without ever getting there.

I can also confirm that this book is applicable to all sorts of painting.  It's not a book where there are huge chunks not applicable to watercolours (or to any other medium).

I'm dying to start putting some of this into practice.  This book gets a solid four palettes from me.  It’s telling that I'm writing this review just five minutes after reading the book, whereas I normally have to think for a few days afterwards before even rating books on Amazon.

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