Tutorial
Coloring the Carving
There are many different ways to color leather. While there are a variety of means to tint or shade the color of leather, there are only a handful of means to add a wide range of hues. The ones I have seen are basically limited to an alcohol-based dye and some sort of pigmented paint. As a general comparison, the dye tends to soak into the leather while the paint will sit on top. To me, the main advantages to using a dye are that the color is more durable in utilitarian items and the natural texture of the leather will still be visible through the color. The main disadvantage, to me, is that the color will tend to fade over time. Paint tends to minimize or eliminate the fading problem. The color that is applied today will be the color that exists in 10 years. But it's not perfect. Paint will get rubbed off of utilitarian items over time, effectively making the color fade anyway. In addition, the leather texture gets covered up by paint. This is minimized a bit by thinning acrylic paint and applying it as a glaze.
On this particular piece, I started by coloring the entire piece with a black alcohol-based dye. Then acrylic was applied with a paint brush. Since coloring on a black background is not the norm, for me, it was important to use a thinned acrylic and layer it on. By layering, one can avoid the stark contrast between the foreground and background. There's no real technique to see, here, so I just included a picture of the final product.
