How to Paint in the Cubism Style

Sometimes cubist art seems random and arbitrary to the naked eye. In truth, artists of the cubist style destruct their figures methodically with care and purpose. Learn to see the world from a cubist standpoint and paint with unique vision.

Things You'll Need

• Acrylic or oil paint
• Paper or canvas

Instructions

Think Like a Cubist

1. Reject the classical idea of beauty. Cubism pays no attention to pleasant external aesthetics, but focuses on how the mind's eye perceives beauty, which is not as simple.

2. Distrust whole images. A person's judgment of an image cannot be pure if they are influenced by memories of similar things. A cubist considers an image portrayed by perspective space (as perceived by the naked eye) as artificial, made up of past influences.

3. Mimic the breakdown of an image by the brain. For example, if you look at a person, your brain imagines what the person must be like and what the person probably looks like from all angles. Cubists try to reproduce this thought process in their paintings.

Paint in the Analytical Cubism Style

1. Analyze the subject's form and break the image down into basic, geometric shapes. Do not limit analysis to only the front side of the object. Consider every perspective.

2. Paint in simple, monochromatic colors. Cubists mostly used grays and blues. Colors were used to establish dimension and texture in the 3-dimensional shapes.

3. Put together the assortment of images on a 2-dimensional plane. Paint the shapes and textures of all angles of the image. Try not to leave any perspectives or shapes out of the painting.

Paint in the Synthetic Cubism Style

1. Consider a scene you would like to paint. Think of all the impressions included in the scene. Synthetic cubism takes all of these different ideas and pushes them together into one subject.

2. Use different materials in your painting. Cubism's synthetic style is a mixed media, so you can include anything you want: paint, ink, newspaper clippings or cloth.

3. Incorporate analytical cubism into your painting. Take your ideas and mixed media and put them all together on one canvas to portray a subject from multiple geometric perspectives.

Tips & Warnings

• Two main artists, Picasso and Braque, invented cubism. There is no better way to learn the subtleties of the style than to study the masterpieces of these two masters.

• There are two main types of cubism, analytical and synthetic. Look at paintings in both styles and decide which type you want to try.