Michael Perks begins by sketching out his vision in pencil. Then he scales the drawing up and draws it in chalk on a sheet of steel. From here he uses either a hand-held plasma cutter or an oxy-acetylene torch to cut. He then grinds the steel by hand creating elaborate patterns with his grinding disk. Some steel is tempered. When cutting by hand, he can also cut softer metals like aluminum and copper. With the aluminum pieces, he does brilliant paintings in the metal that look almost like watercolours. The final pieces are multi-layered with different metals to create landscapes that look 3-dimensional.

Michael’s artwork will also be digitized, wherein his images are cut with a CNC plasma cutter. After the image is cut, it is then hand-sanded to create interesting grinding marks in the steel and tempered to throw various colour patterns. The hand-sanding and tempering processes mean that each piece they create is unique.