About a year after my first experiment in painting with wine, I finally got around to a few actual full-scale paintings in this new medium (for me, anyway; there are many artists already painting in wine).
3 PEC wines, 6 Murtanovski paintings.
For these new pictures, I chose three Prince Edward County wines: a 2008 Cabernet Franc from Casa Dea Estates Winery; a 2008 Malbec from Karlo Estates; and the 2007 Baco Noir from Sandbanks Estates Winery which I still had on hand since last year's trial. Incidentally, I used available light (as in the shot above) for all of my reference photos for these six paintings.
Reductions.
As previously noted, red wine can only get so dark and is unable to provide me with the extreme contrast I prefer to have in my paintings. To get a darker tone from the wine it needs to be reduced by heating it in a pot. Unfortunately, this concentrates the acids and keeps the wine from drying for an annoyingly long time. I got some advice from a physician to freeze some of the wine, remove the ice crystals (which would presumably contain these acids) and then reduce the remaining liquid. I did so and the reductions this time weren't as dark, but did dry in a timely manner.
Because they didn't get dark enough for my tastes, I had to supplement the paintings with watercolours (so they're ultimately, roughly, 90% wine, 10% w/c).
Still Life in Baco Noir
15" x 22", red wine and watercolour, 2011, private collection
Still Life (with Woman) in Baco Noir
22" x 15", red wine and watercolour, 2011
Both of these paintings (and the other four) will be framed and available for purchase (among many of my other paintings) at the Small Pond Arts Gallery during this year's Prince Edward County Studio Tour.
Comments