Steve described his demonstration as his take on Cubism and said it is always this particular style that he is continually drawn towards since his first painting, which he brought with him – a table lamp in Cubist style.

Steve was keen to show us his working process rather than to produce a completely finished artwork within the duration of the demonstration.  He was using a mount card offcut, portrait format, roughly 30 x 40cm.  He chose this because the surface was “forgiving” in the sense that it was good for pencil, Fine-Liners, acrylic paint and Low-Tack masking tape all of which would be used in the process.

Stage ONE : Steve began with a basic hourglass drawing, overlaid with a tall slim bottle and traditional goblet wineglass in the LHS corner.  He reminded us that the more complex your original drawing is, the more fragmented your finished image will be.  So if you’re a beginner with this style – “Keep it Simple” is a good motto.

Stage TWO : Using a ruler, Steve added straight lines to his original drawing taking care to avoid creating parallel lines.  For this piece he drew three  diagonal lines, two coming to a corner outside the border of the image.  With one line leaning vertically.  Steve has collected a range of curved templates – good use for his old 45 records !  He used two of these to draw shallow arcs – top RHS corner and bottom central area.  As in Stage One, if you add more lines your final image will be more fragmented – a larger size paper or board will give you more scope for a more complex piece.

Stage THREE : This is the simplification stage when lines are removed where too close together to avoid the outline becoming too confused.  Existing lines are also shifted sideways or up and down to deliberately “fragment” the image, a bit like moving the pieces of a broken mirror.  The lines you choose to move will shift just by a few millimetres to create an “Assembly of Parts” rather than the original image with continuous outlines.  Chosen sections of the image will now appear to come forwards or backwards in the composition, but consistency is not a feature of this style of artwork.  So fragmentation rather than 3D realism is what you are trying to create.  Finally, now remove all the pencil lines except for those you wish to keep * (see below)

Stage FOUR : Fineliner Lines Stage.  Steve uses Sakura Pigma Micron Fineliners (approx. £30 for a pack of 10) but said that the Amazon alternatives around £10 a pack are a suitable substitute.  He likes Sakura because they don’t “bleed” when overpainted.

Once you are happy with your now fragmented image, you are ready to draw the outlines in pen and also highlight some lines with heavy black outlining.  In Steve’s composition the wineglass bowl and base have heavier lines where there might normally be shadows, but Steve emphasised that the heavy outlining is purely a compositional choice where you are looking for balance throughout your image, rather than trying to recreate natural shading.

Stage FIVE : Fineliner Black Hatching Stage.  Having created your outline image with some emphasised lines, it’s now time to select which areas will have black hatched lines / solid colours / collage detail in them.  For the hatched areas, Steve often starts with some medium sized areas and then selects others to form a balanced composition.  In Steve’s composition he had 10 hatched areas with lines of different thicknesses and orientations.  There were 7 solid colour areas in primary colours, and one collage detail area with music notation.  (Steve said he would probably add more to the finished piece, but time didn’t allow during the demonstration.)

Steve said the aim is to accentuate the geometric shapes and planes in your composition.  Use different thicknesses of Fineliners , draw with a ruler and keep your hatching lines parallel.  In Steve’s composition where there are two hatched areas side by side the lines are thicker / thinner and in different orientations, so from a distance those areas appear as varying tones of grey or different levels of colour.

Stage SIX : Now it’s the painting / collage stage.  Steve prefers Liquitex Heavy Body acrylic paint or Sennelier Abstract brand for his work and often uses primary colours : Cobalt Blue , Scarlet and Cadmium Yellow (stronger than Lemon Yellow) on a plain white ground.  Alternatively solid tones of grey can sit well with the hatched areas.  Steve warned if you don’t have a really steady painting hand then use masking tape to keep your lines crisp.  He prefers “Frog Tape” brand but it has to be the Low-Tack version otherwise you end up tearing your drawn areas.  Once your selected areas are masked off you can paint with acrylic paint.  But WARNING : Don’t allow your painted areas to dry completely as the masking tape can tear a “skin” of acrylic paint off the top surface.  Steve likes to keep some pencil lines* outside the borders of a finished piece in order to show some of his thought process – a bit like showing your “working out” for a maths problem was how he put it.

Finally , Steve completed the picture for the Demonstration (as shown on the website) but with the proviso that he would probably choose a few more areas for colour and collage.  He will email us with the fully finished piece.  A big thankyou to Steve, from all of us, for a very interesting and inspiring Demonstration Evening.