 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're going to talk about highly distressed leather. So I'm working here on a big giant for the Sons of Behemoth and this guy is going to be my sort of harbinger giant and he's going to be an old crazy giant that sort of lives in the swamp that kind of thing and portends the coming of the giants. So I wanted to make him look old and like he was sort of somebody who's out in nature and as such we're going to focus in on you know instead of using a lot of times you see these pants being stitched together flags or something like that said we're going to go for old leathers. So what do we need to do old leather stuff you know if we want to if we want to really get some some nice old leathers going what do we got to do well I started here this is just zenith old and then I gave it a nice simple coat of skeleton horde contrast or sorry not skeleton horde I bought agrarus dunes wrong one I'm reading it right in front of me agrarus dunes contrast although you could use skeleton horde or you could use transparent brown from pro acryl or you could do three or four washes of seraphim sepia or you could do anything like that any roughly trans or you know sepia ink or or or or or doesn't matter right the point is just something that's going to tint it brown and but be transparent because the key with distressed leather is that you have to have you have to build up lots of different texture and capture the way it ages so we're going to start at the beginning here and I'm going to run a couple pictures for you of old distressed leather up on the screen so because as always if you can start with reality do so let's go look at some real pictures of what distressed leather looks like fun huh neat so you can see the distressed leather often has there's a couple things we can tell about it one it's got a lot of different lines and cracks in it because it's relatively thick and it's you know it's skin it's originally a dermis right and to it tends to wear towards edges they get more they have more exposure three it tends to retain scuffs and those scuffs over time start to discolor and you can have different layers and levels of scuffs so given that you also notice there's probably often like a spotting to it where you'll see you'll see like I don't know what it basically what looks like a stippling effect I don't know what else to call in reality I don't know what causes it it's just it's there so with all that being said what we're going to do here is we're going to get a couple different tools so first off we're going to start with an ivory and a black so in this case I'm going to use just some Abaddon black and some pro acrylic ivory and we're going to use two different kinds of brushes so the first being a very sharp thin brush and the second being a short squat stippling brush okay so I'm going to get all set up here and then we're going to come back and we're going to take a look at exactly how we apply these alright so got my paints out and ready to go we've got just a little bit of ivory and a little bit of black over here on a dry palette that's all we need don't need to go any farther than that we're going to start with our stippling brush you can also use a sponge excuse me you can also use a sponge for this you use an old toothbrush you use a lot of different stuff but in this case since I've got a nice short squat makeup dry brush we're going to use that what we're going to do is we're going to come in here and we're just going to start stabbing at this and we're going to stab focusing a little more on the edges now you notice his let he these like pants he's wearing has these sort of leather straps that are covering over it I'm not worrying about those for this we're pretending like those don't exist for this first step because we can go back and get those later it's also why I didn't finish the skin yet the skin will be a different video so tune back in for that so you get the idea we just work our way around and we stipple stipple okay so good easy peasy anybody can do that part nice and simple in fact anybody can do any of this one of the best parts about working with this with old leathers is that this is such an easy easy thing the key is you need to remember it's supposed to be random and human brains don't love random human brains like symmetry and order and stuff like that but we're not going to do that we're gonna do random so the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna find our edges okay and we're gonna start just hashing in now the this has these these sort of straps together but that's okay we're gonna go ahead and hash in some little lines near the edge nice thin sharp brush we'll do on the knee here because I'll be a real nice thing I can show on camera so we just kind of draw them toward the edges see if I can get that yeah there we go the inside of the neon camera here where you see these things poke out this would naturally be grabbing some more stuff be scuffing up against things so we'll just go ahead and hit some harder ones there same with the bottom of the leathers up here toward the edges of the leathers on the inside of his leg and the key is you don't want to make them all the same size you're not trying to create a bunch of evenly sized hashes some will be very long some will be very short some will be not the present at all you just kind of let you just let it happen you just kind of get into the flow get into that Zen state you just start making little lines okay you can also make little lines other places doesn't have to be all near the edge that's where they'll tend to gather they're not all going to be there so you can also just kind of do just throw a little line right there if you need help making sharp thin lines you can use a little flow improver you can mix in a little ink something like that sometimes you can just dot the edge or stipple your way down it like that so instead of it they don't have to be big lines sometimes you can do a little lines you can stipple first and then kind of come in and just hash it out do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do just fun right is it's just it's freeing like there's no the last thing you want to do is just throw some dots around just throw them dots more dots more dots more dots when you get to clumps like this where you have the old leather bunching up this is a great place to come in with your stippling and just kind of really randomly stipple around helps you bring those folds out nice and strong same with anything like here this kind of edge of the leg where it's all you can see where it has this big cut it's coming out and suddenly it cuts back in great place to come in stipple near these edges and so on and so forth so I'm just gonna keep working my way around this thing just lots and lots of hashes and dots but for it like I'll do that all off camera in a minute but I'm gonna show you what else I'm gonna do at the same time which is I'm gonna take some of that black now I used Abaddon black because it's relatively actually weak like as black paints go it's not super strong and I watered it down just a little bit and then what you want to do is in the same way you just want to come in and throw some of those dots around throw some scratches in with that mix in with the edges here again quite randomly this time you can hit a couple of high spots so you can have a place where maybe there's an ear representing a small little cut or something like that doesn't you don't really need to pay attention to what ones you did previously you can make a match like you could have a cut over top if you want and that's fine there's nothing wrong with it it's your it's your mini you just want to get a couple like dark spots in there and like I said the Abaddon black is so weak when you water it down a little bit you see how that's really not turning anything strongly black right and that's what we ultimately want you can also into the deeper areas where you have more shadow you can also throw in just a bunch of little stipples there to like reinforce your shadows but add some texture down there so you got lots of options the key is to go nuts like just go wild have a good time just absolutely mess around make little dots don't be don't be like a dot here and then I'm going to put another dot here and then an equal size dot here and then equal size dot here sometimes I make big clumps sometimes it'll just be one or two sometimes it'll be all spread around like be as random as you can turn your brain off the key to any of these these sites types of techniques is to stop thinking about it if you're thinking about well where's the right place to put it am I doing it right is it balanced did I get it symmetrical then it's gonna look wrong you need to just kind of like ran you get this like state where you're letting your you're letting your hand and your brush do the talking and your brain is just kind of off thinking about something else that's really the nice way to go that's that's what I recommend for painting stop thinking about it make your brain do something else maybe I don't know think about your taxes or something it's right I don't know something that you you are simultaneously required to think about and bored with that way you you you're kind of angry at at the same time that'll help the stabbing motion you know you channel that inner frustration into the stabs so we just keep working that around lots of little different sizes lots of little different hashes you can cross over with some of them okay boom so I'm gonna do that all the leather around this thing and then we'll come back in a moment all right so we're back our homeboy here is all sketched up I'll show him in a minute but I've made a little pre-mix of six different things I'm gonna show you how much fun we can have because now we're at the fun step so over here on the left we have some of our old friend Agrax Earthshade here at the top we've got some trance transparent brown and transparent black from pro acrylic I like their transparent brown just very orangey down here we've got some smoke from Vallejo model color nice transparent really rich interesting color right here we've got some and Ellusian earth and Ellusian it's a green wash from green stuff world and right here we've got some sepia ink from game color so all of these have been thinned the inks the ones that are heavier have been thinned I used a little green stuff world master medium and war colors flow improver just to get everything kind of moving and very liquidy so now comes the very fun step so now what we do remove this over to the side so I can actually bring this guy on camera you can see we've got a whole right of nonsense here just nonsense and that's okay we want to start with the nonsense so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take some of each of these and start working it over these in interesting ways so we'll start here with the smoke and as always you can test it somewhere like the back your hand and as always I'm keeping a paper towel over here to wick off some of the excess okay and then we just start glazing over it just running it right down there and you can see how instantly it's snapping a lot of that back into place but we can play around while it's still wet we don't have to be this is the great part about it with these old leathers they have lots of different tones and colors to them and we can just play with that so let's get some transparent black here into some of these shadows right where we kind of have that up there under the leg we can just kind of push that into where we think there would be shadowed spots we can grab a little bit of our agrax smooth that out let that run down into there I know a lot of times when you see people say like whenever you apply a wash or shade or something like that people like oh you gotta let it dry completely or you'll you'll just ruin all your work it'll just go nuts the world will implode literally everything civilization as we know it will collapse cats and dogs no it's fine you can just keep messing around with this and it's really nice because then all the colors integrate in this really weird organic natural way that you couldn't really do intentionally you do want to make sure you avoid pooling so every so often you'll kind of go through and you know pick up some of the excess and wick it off but just let it start staining everything think of this like like you're staining a coffee table or something you know here I have just a big selection of colors because it's fun to work in a bunch of different stuff leathers have all these different tones in them and again the reason I'm letting the paint kind of decide where it wants to be to a point like letting it run around and and go kind of nuts is because again this stuff gets like old leather is very organic it has weathered organically what I mean by that is it's had a hundred little scratches and dents and dings and things that have happened over the years will paint his big butt here this guy this old giant has like the biggest but he's got a big flat but so because it's so organic in how it's been weathered we have to do our best to try to match that using just the paint the tools we have at our disposal which is just basically paint and I can't you know we in the scale we're not gonna match actually a hundred little different years or days or whatever depending on how old the leather is of the various scratches and hashes and dots and things like that but we can set it up with layers and by letting these colors flow together incidentally by having different shades and tones show up in there right we can make it so it feels much more organic much more like it is in nature when you'll have leathers that have lots of brown tones in them and then they've got blacks and stuff like that mixed in deep you know purple-ish tones sepia's all sorts of things so we can just kind of go nuts and have that in there you can stipple these things around do whatever you want your leather you decide this is your world you are the creator and so the advantages to using all these different inks and stuff like this is not only that it then gives you a nice sort of automatic careful touching your finger against it or that'll happen this guy broke free of his little thing I'm holding him on in case that's not horribly obvious that's fine such as life we paint on you notice how I'm often just really flooding the area but then going back and removing it again that's an intentional choice because by just flooding the area what's going to happen is those pools are actually going to make some like little coffee stains here and there now usually when we're washing and applying inks our nightmare of nightmares is coffee stains right in other words if you've ever seen that that sort of tide marks that show up on your miniature after you've washed it that's a coffee stain right and it's usually an absolute nightmare however in this case and especially with old leathers this is one of the kid one of the times where it's not a disadvantage it's an advantage having a wash that sits there and coffee stains things actually makes the leather look a lot cooler because that the way that it tide marks and sort of in it that's happening because it's dispersing pigment in unevenly and the way it's doing that is actually much like how old leather looks so in this case it actually ends up being a huge advantage for us to do that so eventually though you will get to the point where you want to just kind of let it rest or you've mixed enough of your colors in you got kind of everything going on there all of our different spots maybe we've got enough of our dark colors whatever we feel is apropos cleaned up enough of the big pools and then at some point we're gonna let it rest and so now you can see with it wet you can see how that covered up all of our all those different hashes but they're still kind of showing through if you see any big pools like that that you want to kind of get in there and stop up you don't want anything that large sitting on a flat space so once you're decided to let it rest you just kind of go in with a mostly dry brush you just kind of dab it around there and just make sure you got all those little elements out now the key is we let it dry and we see what magic has happened by the way you can go a lot more crazy with the colors than I did here I used a lot of kind of things that are still in brown and worked in some greens here and there but you can really go nuts with this leather is actually quite a wide variety of influenced colors you can work in reds you can work in purples you can work in as I'm doing here greens yellows and oranges are certainly on the table so I mean you could really have a good time working in as long as they're thin and transparent like this you can kind of stick anything in the into leather and as long as the sort of majority tone is a brown or a sandy or a black or something like that it'll feel completely appropriate it'll just feel like a pretty old worn exotic leather so we're gonna let him sit let that dry and we'll come back in a minute I'll talk about next steps you can do to go from here all right so here's our big boy why didn't you re glue him in between the time when it was drying vents well that's an excellent question viewer I don't know I don't know what the answer to that question is but at any rate so you can see how he's it's all dried out and now we get some real interesting see all the natural transitions and colors in there where you can still see all the little texture poking out from below right like a lot of our hashes and scratches they're still there but they're much more muted they look much more part of it now so now you've got some fun steps you can do because the reality is you don't have to stop here as with all of these things you could and this is perfectly acceptable leather there's nothing wrong with you know where we're at right now but of course you can keep going farther so we're gonna go a little farther in this video because hey come on isn't that what we always do don't we always go just a little too far but if you leave now cuz you like it or because you're you're happy with this go ahead and hit the like button on your way out all right so basically I can get some more of that ivory that I've got and now we're gonna do is we're gonna go back into that and what I'm gonna do is sort of now create a second layer of that just reinforce some of these hashes where I want just randomly around the edge make some different scratches around the area the point being is what you don't have to stop at one time one of the cool things about working on kind of old leathers is that you can just get into this really great zone and do this over and over again the more you kind of go back and make little hashes and scratches and then wash over all of it and then do it again again the more organically natural it looks so it's wonderful because again it's not something you have to like think a great deal about it's not a process that requires a lot of real careful brush control stuff that frankly can get kind of exhausting and annoying I mean we've all been to that place where you know hours into edge highlighting something you just want to kind of slam your head against the desk because you've hit the wall of how much you can do what is a very mentally exhaustive process this is the opposite of that this is so liberating because there's no single thing you're actually doing you're just making lots of random colors it brings you back to finger painting as a child or something like that when you were just creating art for no real purpose or reason and didn't really know what you wanted to be you just started throwing color around because it seemed like a fun thing to do this can be much the same sort of thing when I go back in the second or third time or fifth time I do this by the way I'll progressively hit kind of less and less of the the actual area so that way I start building up actual distinction between the various sections so now for example I can come back in and maybe we'll cover everything with this by the way if I were doing this in you know sort of if I were you at home I would probably give your your paint that I just put on a little bit longer to dry so I'm gonna be touching my brush rather lightly here because I could pick up paint it hasn't really fully set yet you do want to watch out for that so make sure as you work your way around when you start applying a bunch of heavy washes you do run the risk of picking up old paint and so it's a it's a good idea to make sure that your your your first layers are nice and dry or that you kind of lighten the touch of your brush a little bit so if you want to be real aggressive with it that's fine just make sure you just make sure you give that that ivory or black or whatever you're using a while to dry you can also start on the second time through shaping colors a little more aggressively so maybe I'll take some of this smoke and some of this black mix them together and we'll start forcing some nice real deep shadows down here in the areas or up where I think I want some deeper shadows in there and you can just keep repeating that process over and over and over again until you get something that you like and it's gonna look real varied and cool you're gonna see lots of different layers of scratches some are with are some of which are gonna be you know darn near invisible they'll just look like deep buried layers of the leather you can add in colors so like I said here where you know I have this very orangey brown you can go in with you know an airbrush or with glazes and you could bring in more oranges like I did there with this one or you could take a yellow ink and mix it in with your your leather and and get much the same effect so there's really lots of fun things you can do in this case I'm gonna eventually work in a lot of different greens into this guy because again swamp dwelt swamp dweller you know weird old hermit of the woods is what I'm aiming for so because of that I want to make sure that he has that kind of green tone hidden without I think it'll actually work really nice against the the other tones in here but that's it you just keep repeating that and you can get to a really fun space a place as far as looking like you've got heavily distressed very old worn leather so there you go I hope you liked that if you did hey give it a like so if you've got suggestions for future hobby cheating videos or questions about this feel free to drop those down in the comments always happy to help but subscribe for additional hobby cheating we have new videos here every Saturday as always I thank you very much for watching this one and we'll see you next time