How to get human skin color and blood on leather.

[billybopp]

11 hours ago, SUP said:

I am making that hand from The Addam's family for Halloween for my daughter. She wants it to look relatively newly chopped off, so it needs to have a color like skin and bleeding, maybe a little early putrefaction.

I am making it with veg-tanned leather, so it is naturally skin colored. I plan to apply neatsfoot oil so it will darken a little. Before that I need to decide on how to color it. 

What type of paint should I use for this? Acrylics was suggested but they would be shiny and not look very natural, isn't it? Alcohol based Dyes? Can they be painted on? Or are there other types of paints or dyes that I could use?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Most acrylic paint lines have additives and/or topcoats to give a more matt finish (along with a bunch of other properties too).  You also might want to blend to black with red to get a darker red that's more like blood, and also to vary the color some.  It would be darker in places where it's starting to dry than in places where it's fresh.

- Bill

 

PS - be sure to show us what you come up with when you finish it.  This sounds really cool.

Edited October 11, 2023 by billybopp

[Sheilajeanne]

How to get blood on leather?

Um, I think we ALL know exactly how to do that...   There's a reason I keep a box of band-aids handy by my work bench!

 

You'll show us pictures when it's all done, right??  RIGHT??

Sounds like a really cool project! 

[SUP]

@Sheilajeanne @billybopp I would love to put it up when done - both when I finish the stitching and when my daughter completes the painting. 

Fun project but a little complicated. Hats off to the people who designed this. I have no idea how they came up with the ideas of making the nails embedded at the base, how to make the fingers curl a little and so on.  

It's worth the price of the pattern. It's on Etsy, if you search for  - 'The Hand'. 

Edited October 11, 2023 by SUP

[Sheilajeanne]

It took quite a bit of searching, and I kept coming up with fake silicone hands, but I finally got it!

Here's the link, if anyone wants to give it a try!  https://www.etsy.com/listing/1389838800/leather-hand-pdf-pattern

Edited October 12, 2023 by Sheilajeanne

[SUP]

@Sheilajeanne  I should have thought of putting up the URL.  Sorry about that! You had quite a search.

[fredk]

mmmm, I think I may have to consider buying this pattern

As for paints; any acrylic paints will do. You can get sets of tubes of acrylic paints in discount stores. But you'll need to mix the colours. Alternatively, Warhammer/Citadel does a full range of flesh and blood colours. Any colour of 'flesh' you can imagine, from Goblin Green through Dwarf to Dead and many colours & shades for red. Citadel paints are acrylics meant for painting miniature figures for fantasy war-gaming

[SUP]

@fredk  The ready mixed colors sound delightfully gruesome.  Just checked Citadel. Available on Amazon too. Thank you for that tip. This will make painting the hand much  easier.

[billybopp]

Ah hah!  A Creative Awl pattern.  They most always have a video of their patterns being assembled, so I took a look and there's a lengthy for this.  If you look at about 57:15 or so they show the dye and paint used for the one they show.  I don't usually watch videos this long, but I'll often jump ahead to see if there's anything that catches my eye. 

 

[SUP]

@billybopp I should look at it. It is so long and I bought a class at Tandy... so got all the instructions there. Thank you for giving me that specific time so I don't have to go through it all!

[fredk]

@SUP another idea, cos I spotted it in the shops yesterday; at this time of year, ie pre-Halloween, the shops, especially the discount shops are selling cheap sets of face/body paints. I saw sets that looked like dried water-soluble cubes of colour, like wot we used at school, but I also saw sets of tube paints. All sets had various 'flesh' and 'blood' colours. The tube set I looked at had a good selection of paints, a mixing palette and brushes for £6