Wine Cork Series Watercolors- Finished!

I finished the wine cork watercolors and will soon be listing them on Etsy. I think I might make a set of cards with various wine corks, too. I still need to scan the watercolors to make prints.

These were so much fun to paint- they are simple subjects, but so unique and they have so much detail to add. I love to get caught up painting the small details.

I am painting on 130 lb. rough surface paper this time- I tend to use different papers depending on what I am painting and this time I really wanted the texture to show. I use almost all Windsor & Newton watercolors. For the corks, I started with Raw Sienna and Burnt Umber washes to get the base colors of the corks and used Payne's Gray for shadows. My darkest details are mostly less diluted versions of Burnt Umber and Payne's Gray. The wine stains on the cork ends are a mix of Thalo Red (Alizurin Crimson works also) with Ultramarine Blue to get a nice wine shade of purple. My favorite part of painting these corks ( and most paintings) was adding the final details and tweaking the shadows and highlights. While I do leave my lightest areas when adding washes, I do sometimes go back with white gouache or acrylic to get stronger highlights. At the end, I am also adding in my darkest darks in the shadow areas.

I will show the finished Zinfandel bottle next time-

Thanks for looking!

Sheryl