Method · Red wine
Painting with red wine
Red wine is the second of Rouslam Botiev's kitchen pigments. Poured, reduced, and brushed onto paper, it gives him a range of colour no tube can — from fresh violet to a deep, dried russet — and a way of painting Lisbon with Lisbon's own table.
The method
From the glass to the page
Wine behaves differently from coffee. Fresh from the bottle it lays down cool purples and violets; as it oxidises and dries it walks toward brick, rust, and brown. Botiev paints with that change on purpose, knowing a stroke will not stay the colour it was when it left the glass.
He reduces wine to deepen it, thins it with water to open it, and layers it wet so earlier passes bleed up into later ones. The result is a single-pigment painting with a surprisingly wide register — bruised shadows, warm flesh, the red of a roof at dusk.
As with coffee, there is no going back over a mistake with white. The bare paper is the only light in the picture, so the drawing has to be right while the wine is still moving.
Why wine
Painting with Lisbon's table
Portugal is a country of red wine, and Botiev uses it the way he uses coffee — as an honest, everyday material rather than a trick. It carries the idea that runs through all his work: that the ordinary things of a place can become its portrait.
There is humour in it, too. A glass of red is what you are offered at an Alfama table, and turning it into a painting of that same street closes a small circle between the city and the picture of the city.
From the studio
The material
Colour, paper, and change
Wine is mostly water and pigment, so Botiev paints on heavy rag papers that can take the wetting, and he watches the colour shift as it dries — the most important judgement he makes is what a passage will become, not what it is.
Like the coffee works, the finished wine paintings are kept out of direct sun and framed behind UV glass. Treated this way they hold the warm, settled tones that wine reaches once it has fully dried.
Questions about the wine works
What does Rouslam Botiev use to paint — is it really wine?
Yes. He paints with red wine as a pigment, concentrating it for depth and thinning it with water for lighter passes, much as a watercolourist works a single colour.
What colours can you get from red wine?
More than people expect. Fresh wine gives cool violets and purples; as it oxidises and dries it moves through brick and russet to a warm brown, so a single painting can hold a wide range of tone.
Are red-wine paintings permanent?
Kept out of direct sunlight and framed behind UV-protective glass, the works are stable. The colour settles as the wine dries; Botiev paints on archival rag papers chosen for repeated washes.
Can I buy or commission a wine painting, and where can I see them?
Available works are listed in the shop and commissions can be arranged through the atelier in Alfama, Lisbon, where the original wine and coffee works can be seen in person.