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Alison C. Board has always had a creative career. Having originally trained to be a ballet teacher, she changed her subject to fine art. Alison spent fifteen years managing and subsequently owning a contemporary gallery and arts centre in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, UK where she also taught both the adult and children's courses. In 2009 she gave it up to pursue her ambition of studying for a degree in Fine Art at the Arts University in Bournemouth and graduated in 2013 with First Class Honours. Alison's ever-growing portfolio includes regular demonstrations and workshops for the SAA. Alison also runs a range of workshops, courses and painting weekends from her studio, and has recently begun to offer international painting holidays. When Alison isn't teaching, she can be found sketching and photographing with her husband Richard and her two Jack Russells, surrounded by the beautiful Dorset landscape. She is inspired by her countryside home and her family history, as well as film and theatre, and song lyrics.
A Beginner's Guide to Watercolour with Mixed Media encourages beginners to energise their watercolours by using other media, and takes the fear and confusion away from the often bewildering array of materials on offer. In this clear and practical guide, Alison shows readers what's available and how to use these painting mediums and materials, with six step-by-step projects to work through. Subjects include flowers, animal portraits, dancers, cityscapes and landscapes. * Leisure Painter * Mixed media is all too often an excuse for playing with technique to no specific end. Alternatively, it's a footnote in a book about another medium - you can always add a bit of gouache to create highlights or how about rolling up some cling film and seeing what happens? Alison has made something of a career out of working with a huge variety of techniques and media and her armoury is huge. So huge, in fact, that if she wasn't absolutely on top of it, this would be the messiest book ever, both in terms of results and organisation. She is, however, absolutely confident with her methods and this is a masterpiece. Its main merit is that it isn't a technical book at all. Or, rather, it's absolutely about technique, but only for creative ends. You don't put paint on paper to cover up the surface, you do it to create an image that satisfies both you and the viewer. You might want to convey the tranquillity of a rolling landscape, or the play of light and colour in a flower or plant, but the point is that it's all about the end result, not how you got there. A chef creates a dish that delights the diner and, if another chef admires the method of cooking, that's just a sideshow. So, buckle up and prepare to be astounded. The projects here include flowers, landscapes, people and animals. Materials include both wet and dry media as well as accessories such as hessian, bubble wrap and even chicken wire to create texture. All these things you'd expect, but look at the results - they don't scream clever at you, they invite you to study the inner character of the subject. Less is more, the invisible is the first thing you see. Oh, and by the way, the figure demonstration is of a dancer: the sense of movement Alison (a trained ballet teacher) gets into a static pose will just take your breath away. If you haven't already gathered that I'm calling this the best book ever on mixed media, well, I am. * Artbookreview.net *
Helen Frankenthaler
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