wine corks take two

this is too insane not to post. remember the previous post showing a bunch of different ways to use wine corks in an artistic way? well, this takes it to a whole new level! artist Scott Gundersen re-purposes wine corks to create giant portraits. he uses the colors of the different wine corks to add contrast and shading to his work — the wine that stains the inside of the cork gives him a lot of options to work with. Scott collects and stores all the corks in his studio, where he then stands thousands of them on their ends to pick and choose the colors he wants to work with.

via Scott Gundersen

he works in a three step process: first photographing his subjects, then rendering their faces into a pencil portrait. after this is finished, he can start work with the corks. he separates and divides the corks according to their color and tone – he has to determine it’s place based on the tone of the persons skin, as well as the teeth, hair, eyes, and nose.

his portrait of “Grace” is the most documented – it took him a mere 50 hours (ha!) to complete and measures at about 96 x 66 inches. for just this one piece, he used 9,217 corks. like i stated in the previous post, the Mediterranean cork forests are under huge stress due to over harvesting for wine corks, and Gundersen uses the corks in a beautiful and sustainable way, while drawing attention to the destruction of the forests.