Natural Color Tool Impressions On Dark Painted Color Background?

[Miss Reining]

I have been searching and can't find it anywhere!

How do you keep the tool impression the color of the natural leather, when you color the background dark??

[Stewart]

Tandy has a You tube of doing that which you maybe able to adapt.. I am working on leaving

aa white paint on a dyed tooled impression. My mentor has explaned,so it is up to my

workmanship.

Joe

[Bob Blea]

Hello Miss Reining,

This is usually done by dyeing the background very carefully. I believe the technique is described in some of the Al Stohlman books, though I'm not sure which ones. It might be in 'Coloring Leather'. Also trying searching this forum under the term background dyeing, that might help. In short, you use a small brush dipped in the dye you want your background to be. You add small amounts of dye to the background areas, being careful to NOT add it right next to your tooling. The leather will wick the dye away from where you add it, and if you get too close to the tooling it might get pulled up into the tooling and ruin your work. With a little practice you will get a feel for how much dye to add and how much wicking you will get. As with anything, try it on some scrap first to get a feel for it.

Hope this helps,

Bob

[Cyberthrasher]

It sounds like you may be referring to block dying. If you put a little dye on a cloth and wrap it around a block of wood, you can wipe it over your piece and it will only apply dye to the high spots, leaving the tool impressions the natural color. You'll want to experiment with how much dye to put on the cloth. If you get too much you can accidentaly push some into the tool impressions.

Now, if you want to go the opposite direction and color a background that you've hammered into relief (where the artwork/design is the high spot), then you'll need to be very careful with your brush work as Bob said, or find a good resist to leave your design uncolored.

Here's a picture of the block dying I'm referring to, just to see if we're on the same page for what you're asking.

I was lazy in this one and just wrapped the cloth on my hand, so a little bit of black got pushed into some of the lines due to the give in my fingers.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Cyberthrasher