Thank you for the kind words gentlemen :-)
And of course I'm more than happy to share my technique for painting leather with you. Simply said, I'm using techniques that are used by figurine painters. Make sure you check out work by Mike Blank, Jaume Ortiz, Marijn Van Gils, Diego Ruina and the likes via Google. There are numerous tutorials to be found on the net on the subject too.( another good source is
www.planetfigure.com)
I've painted up the cushion of the back seat tonight and took some pictures along the way. Now, bare with me, because I had to use my smartphone camera and it doesn't give the best results.
As I said, I'm using life Color (LC) acrylics but you can achieve the same effect with any kind of modelling paint (oils, enamels, other brands of acrylics,..)
Here it goes:
STEP 1As a first step, we put the base coat on the cushion. Since we will be building up the layers of paint, it's important to start with a relative light base coat.
In this case I've mixed up LC weathered black and light skin tone.
At this stage it doesn't matter if the layer is completely opaque or not.
(Maybe a little word on this: When lightening up colours, never use white. It will 'kill' the colour. If you want a grey colour, you can mix up black with skin tone colour. This will give a warm grey result. If you want a cold grey result, you can use very light blue for instance. Try it out. You'll notice the difference compared to mixes with white.
The same goes when you want to darken a colour. You can add dark red or dark brown for instance instead of black.)
STEP 2We are going to add some highlights & shadows now.
For the highlights, we use the base colour + some extra skin tone colour. for the shadows the base colour + dark brown. (you can mix up different batches with different shades if you like, if you want to add more variety.
Note that, from now on, I dilute the paint until it has the consistency of milk. The idea is to 'layer up' the paint. Make sure your brush is not wet, but damp with paint. A way to do this is to load up you brush with paint and tip it against a piece of kitchen towel for instance.
Start out with the highlights. You don't have to work very accurately here. When you are happy about it, you can add the shadows.
STEP 3
In this step, started to paint in some more structure and wear. For this I've used the base colour + light sand colour. The idea is to put a 'glaze' over the previous paintwork.
You can use several layers until you are satisfied with the result.
I've also painted the edges of the cushion with very diluted sand colour, to replicate the wear.
STEP 4Now it's time for a glaze or filter (very diluted paint) of Van Dyck brown oil paint, mixed up with a bit of Humbrol pale red. This layer will tone down the previous effects and will leave a brownish hue.
The picture is not sharp but I hope you can see the result clear enough.
STEP 5Now it's time to add scratches etc. We do this with a very fine brush and highly diluted paint.
For the light scratches I've used the first base colour + a lot of skin tone colour for the dark shadow next to the scratch I've used a mixture of brown & black. The key is to dilute the paint enough and to apply it with a very fine brush.
The effect can be a bit too strong at first, but as a last step we apply another layer of highly diluted oil paint.
Et voila: a worn leather cushion :-)
I hope this step by step was useful to you. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any more questions.
Grtz
Flip
