Dye Karung?

[StrigaMort]

So I have a nice Karung (water snake) hide, but it's the slightly boring natural light brown color. I'm thinking about changing it to something else. Anyone ever dye this? Also,is there a resist technique for dyeing the skin, but leaving the scales natural (or two different colors for that matter)?

If you aren't familiar with the look of Karung, it looks very much like lizard, but feels like shark to me. Very uniform, and tiny pebble like scales. Pretty nice really, just kinda bleh being light brown.

[Tiara]

I think I have one piece of karung. It was an unidentified old skin I got cheaply. Rather dried out with some faint markings on a beige background. Small diamond shaped scale pattern.

I have found a way to get a 2 tone effect on snake skin. Works better on larger scale patterns. You can mess around with different variations on the method. Dye from the top as the scales will deflect dye into the channels and it absorbs p under the scales in different shades. Works best on translucent scale patterns but there is another option for dark scales with paints in a minute.

I've dyed a light color from the back first so it is all even. Different effects on the top dye if the skin is dry, pre wetted or still damp from back side dye. Pick has 2 samples on cobra.

With this possibly karun bit, I did get some two tone effect with acrylic based cloth paints, similar to cova/angelus leather paints. This brand is lumiere. You can also get the fine ground pigments and add to the base. Pearl ex is their brand of colored mica but I've also used auto paint pigment and micas from a DIY cosmetic company--very cheap samples and wide range of colors. So I have translucent, color shift pearls and color shift opaques that can be dilute to semi transparent, and some that are black with spectral tones. Can blend any of these or layer.

So for one test piece on this karung, I did a block dye with a dark color to bring out the points. When dry, I diluted one of the green paints quite a bit with water so it flowed into the channels between the scales. When dry, I tested both with a transparent pearl highlighter--I used a light blue. The blue shows more on the dark points but gives a slight blue pearl on the green also. The other bit I used a green/gold color shift.

I'll see if I can get the link for the image to work, been a while since I added an image

hmm, no luck uploading the image, Will try to send via pm

[StrigaMort]

Wow, that is some really awesome dyeing! I'm going to have to re-read your method a few times to fully understand, but it certainly looks to be worth the effort.

Thanks for the explanation, and the pic.

Edited April 24, 2014 by StrigaMort