Books in Barron's Pocket Art Guides series offer practical advice and instruction to art students and amateur painters. Each of these books focuses on a specific aspect of painting or drawing, and includes many tips that even experienced professionals will find new and helpful. All titles have many captioned color illustrations, as well as enlightening notes on how famous artists solved specific problems. This book describes different approaches to creating an abstract painting, ranging from simplification and distortion of identifiable subjects to the rendering of pure abstract forms. It also explains that artists who abandon figurative references must nevertheless demonstrate command of composition and color theory. Examples of abstract canvases by artists including Paul Klee and Robert Delaunay are shown and analyzed.