I did more work on my Cubist style painting last night.  The first image I showed yesterday looked more than a little disjointed and had no real focus. Yes, they were cubist in form, if you take the word cube literally.

Beginning to look a little less disjointed

Cubism Explained

However, that is not what Cubism is about.  Cubism is the art of observing an object from all sides, breaking the shapes down into their simplest forms, and portraying them on the same surface of the canvas/page: like taking photographs from many different angles and placing them down onto the page, overlapping other photographs as you go.

Think of when you draw an object for the first time: you draw large shapes first rather than jumping straight into the detail.  For example, when you draw a face, you start with an oval shape.  You may mark the nose as a triangle or a prism-like shape, just to get a sense of where the nose will sit.  When you draw an arm, you initially mark in a cylindrical shape, the same as when you draw a cup.  Once all the basic shapes are done, you then start to make those shapes a bit more like an arm or a face, filling in the details as you go.  In Cubism, you retain all of those basic shapes and structure, disregarding beauty and aesthetics. It is the seeing of objects as they really are, at their most fundamental level.

Analytical Cubism

Once you have broken down the basic structure of an item and portrayed the view that you are looking at on paper.  You would block in your basic colour tones, which by the way, are generally monochromatic in the earlier stages of Cubism: called Analytical Cubism (which is what I’m creating here).  You then move the object or move around the object to see it from another viewpoint, drawing over the top of what you already have on the canvas then block in with paint again.  This is the overlapping of the object and is what gives Cubism its jumbled and chaotic look. You do this repeatedly until you are satisfied that you have observed the object from its many viewpoints.

Starting to look more Cubist - I have started to overlap the objects. You can still discern the objects but they are starting to meld

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  It does, but it’s not so easy to paint.  You have to really observe the object, see all the planes, changes in direction, and shapes.  It is very subtle. I believe it is only when Synthetic Cubism came along that it became simpler.  It became more about line than tone.  It also became very flat, whereas Analytical Cubism was much more 3 dimensional.  If you want an education on Analytical Cubism, I would suggest that you look at the art videos I have on the site, called Abstractus by Paul Cosquieri – a fantastic artist from Gibraltar.  There are 3 videos, and he demonstrates how a Cubist piece is painted, and explains what it is all about, and who the main exponents were: Picasso and Braque .  It’s a fantastic introduction for those who are scared by Cubism i.e. me!  Thanks go to Peggy for inspiring me to give this a try.