Multi Color Dying

[Harag]

Hi all

As you may or may not know, I'm fairly new here and slowly learning the art, done several tooling bits but generally they have all been dyed with antique brown stain. I've placed an order this week for my first batch of OIL Dyes (about 7 colours I think)

I've seen some amazing work done by loads of different people, but one thing I'm interested in is how do you do different colours on a tooled piece, e.g one piece I've done is a celtic dragon with some celtic knots around him, I would like to do the main background piece dk brown, the knots maybe red, and the dragon say, green.

I would like to know where do I start with dying? how long to wait between each colour? I've got daubers and brushes, but was thinking if I use a dauber on the background then I would run into the knots/dragon tooled sections, and brushing might take too long.

Any help / advice would be appreciated.

[lightingale]

Hi Harang,

Multi colour dying like the image you described is actually quite intuitive. Pick up some quality spirit dyes (like Fiebings or Angelus) and pick up your paint brush. I have wider brushes or daubers for big areas and teeny tiny brushes for fine details.

There are some tricks people have used. For example, you could mask areas with liquid latex, dye the whole area, and peel off the latex. This doesn't always yield a neat result, so I prefer to just paint the dye with small brushes.

You can still antique as normal. For coloured projects, I thin my antique (Fiebings paste) with tan kote to lessen the intensity.

You'll want to test whether your finish is compatible with your choice of dyes on a piece of scrap.

[Tina]

How to/ Carefully :-)

When using spirit dye (I use Angelus) it's like water and can easily run all over the place, have a piece of tissue handy to get rid of the excess dye on the brush.

Another thing to use is a reducer (example denatured alcohol), many dyes is pigment strong and can be deluted to 50% or more, it's better to paint layer by layer until your happy with the shade than get that first coat on and it's way to strong (and irreversible).

I second lightningale's suggestion about the brushes, in my book you can never have to manny :-)

[Harag]

Oil dye and spirit dye are two different things right? I'm getting oil die - can I still reduce these down - and if so what do I use?

[Northmount]

Oil dye is mostly spirit dye

Tom