According to Jacques Hurtubise, the hard edge technique came gradually. For his pre-1966 creations, Hurtubise created a splash on a solid surface, the more the so-called splash increased, the more difficult it was to control these spots. It was then that Jacques Hurtubise developed, from the year 1966, the stencil technique. He then draws the shape of the desired spot on paper and uses this drawing as a stencil on the surface. This same shape repeated several times to create the optical pattern where the negative and positive space is one. According to Jacques Hurtubise: "The shapes themselves did not have much meaning. It was the relationship between the stain and the background that counted." 1

1.Exhibition Catalogue of Jacques Hurtubise au Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Vancouver Art Gallery, 1981.