Wine Label Proposal Project - Part 2 - "Sexy" Label

To re-cap my previous post (Wine Label Proposal Project ),  over the course of the next few weeks I will be working on 2 wine label concepts for 5th Road Estate Wines. The owners of this company will be choosing the labels they will print from a variety of artist and I hope that my pieces will be among those selected.

For the first label the clients have asked for a 'traditional' composition. I
The second concept needs to be 'sexy'. The clients have a secondary line of wines that is mostly shipped to Las Vegas. These labels will incorporate a word representing 'sexy', and are to be
classy not trashy!

So to start, as always, it began with ideas -- here are my thumbnails. 
For the 'sexy' label I'm going to use the grape-stomp concept (2nd row, far right) and incorporate the word 'Strut..."

My first step was to delineate my image area on to watercolour paper. I made the dimensions double the size I will need for the final output of the label so that it will scale properly and let me work with a high-resolution image. Once that was finished I sketch my concept using blue non-reproduce able pencil so that when I scan the final painting my lines will be harder to see. (Sorry that it's already hard to see; I took this image with Photobooth :s)

Next, I began painting in my background colour using a wet wash. I also painted a base colour on the woman's legs.

Then on to the dress. I applied a couple layers of red to the dress, each time letting the paint dry some, to increase the colour's saturation.

For the barrel I added little detail to detract attention from it. It's an element to enhance the composition but it isn't the focus. I repeated the wet wash technique and made some brown bleed into the background.

Subtle details were added simply to increase understanding of the object.

It was brought to my attention that this concept might look better if the woman was at a different angle. So I repeated the above steps and created this:

After scanning this I retouched the colours in Photoshop.

Next I brought that image into InDesign to add my text. There you have it. The blank grey area on the right will allow the client to incorporate their wine information into the design.