The Silent Moo...
by Merekat
Leather. Looks great in just about any article of clothing. But straps perhaps can be the most fun. Here is a quick way for anyone to get realistic-looking leather in a matter of minutes.Click on the step's number to see the corosponding pic.

Step One: Pick two colors out that you think is a nice leather tone. As you can see in my foreground and background colors on the tool bar, I've chosen a dark chocolate brown and a medium beige. Brown doesn't matter, really. Just make sure there's a nice dark and a nice medium. Take a look at the lower right corner of step one. That shape of brown under the buckle is the medium I have chosen as one of my two colors. That is what I have started every leather strap with.

Now, check the 'preserve transparency' button on your layers pallet, go choose a nice brush from your brushes menu. I have chosen a couple of brushes with a very haphazzard pattern. (The brush itself is shown there on the right thigh.) The brush isn't exceedingly important. Just the fact that the grain of it is very organic and non-pattern forming. If you have 6.0, you'll be able to find that particular brush named: 'Plastic Wrap brush size '90' in your loadable brushes. For 5.0, don't worry. The lovely mottled fuzzy spotted brush should do just fine.

The brush is set to 'multiply', opacity 43. With the darker color in your foreground, pad over the medium beige base color. Don't just streak across, for this tends to create a repeating pattern on the texturing, which isn't natural-like leather. Just spot it so that there's an uneven and random blotching.

Step Two: Switch the foreground and background colors, the lighter brown on top. Now, make the brush 'color dodge' at about 33 (Be careful. Color dodge can get real hot real fast.). Lightly blot over the whole of the leather especially where the highlights will be from your light source.Then take a small, hard-edged circle brush and set it to 'multiply' at 43. Switch colors to the dark brown. Carefully keeping distance from the leather's edge, streak two lines close to each side where the stitching would go, if you want stitching. If not, skip this step. Also, this is where you can define the edge of the strap itself. (See uppermost strap in the pic above. You can see the side of it just a bit. I used the brush to draw it here.

I've also done some preliminary shading of the leather under the armor and the buckles. Just take a big fuzzy brush and gradually build up the darkness using the 'multiply' technique.
Step Three: I did a couple of things here. First, take your smudge tool using a hard-edged circle brush. Make it a SMALL brush, about 2/3s the size of the stitching brush. Set it to about 85. Now, carefully spot-drag the brush on either side of the brown streaks for the stitching. It's okay if the lines aren't straight here. What you're trying to do is pucker the leather a bit to look like the stitching is set deep into the leather. By decreasing the sides of the shadowing, it looks like actual stitching.

Next, take that small circle brush (perhaps with a bit of a fuzzy edge) and using the lighter brown set your brush to 'screen' at about 33. Dab (don't drag your brush here, get 'clicky' with it. ;} your brush on the more rounded areas of the puckering to highlight the puckers a bit. This is the first bit of highlighting. For some real nice glinting, change the brush to 'color dodge' and turn down the opacity if you need to, and go over your puckering highlights again. Not all the areas, just where the main peak of the leather would be (the top of the fold or bend, for example).
Step Four: The rest is just using a medium or big fuzzy brush on a 43 or lower 'multiply' setting with either color to richen the tone and feel of the leather. Also, I've done some final shadows of the armor and the buckles here. One of the main keys is the pull of the leather over the thread of the buckle. Compare the left buckles with the lower right buckles. Or with the picture before, for that matter. See how the leather goes farther up the metal pin of the buckle? Depending on which angle you're viewing this tells which curve the leather will follow. For my buckles here, the left ones are facing away from me, so the leather hides most of the pin. You can show this one of two ways: either erase that part of the buckle, or while on your buckle layer, hit the create mask button at the lower part of your layers menu...

Step Five: This will create a mask attached to your buckle layer. (Imagine the layer you see here contains only the buckles. ;} ---oh. And that it's locked, or 'preserve transparency', depending on which version of photoshop you have.)

Now, click on the mask you just made on your buckle layer so that there is a little icon next to your layer that looks like the mask button. See it to the left of the layer? Good. This means you are now drawing on your mask. If you want to draw later on your layer, make sure you click on the left window side of the layer so that a little paintbrush is in the box. But for right now, we're on the mask, okay?

Using a hard-edged brush, and making sure your brush is black, normal and 100%, carefully draw on the parts of the buckle pin you want made invisible. Any place you put black on the mask layer, if there is picture stuff on that area of the layer, it will turn invisible. You can also do this with fuzzy brushes or with less opacity of your black brush to make things only partially invisible. This is how I 'erased' the pin part of the buckles without actually erasing those parts of the buckles. They are still there, so I can use them in full on other things if I so desired.
Step Six: Okay, so you have the leather looking like it's going over the pin, but if you haven't shaded it properly there, then it won't. There is a shadow of the edge of the leather as it is going over the pin. Take your darker brown, multiply, 43, small slightly fuzzed brush and make that edge darker as I had done in the beginning with the side of the leather strap itself. Also, there is a highlight on the curve of the leather over the pin. Take a small color dodge brush and gentle highlight that, slightly sweeping down the sides of the hole as you fade out the highlight.

Whell! Almost done! Now to really show off the leather, and the fact that it is quite well-used, take the lighter brown, brush is 'screen', 23 opacity, and draw a light vertical streak on the top of the leather bend. This is where the hottest highlight will be. And the 'shinyness' of it will make the leather look sleek from being worn down from use. Older leather looks shinier. So make sure all your tone and texture is down, but to really make it age, put in a highlight somewhere logical. Check old pics of saddles or coats to see this technique.

And, there you go. Bam. Leather so real it moos. I hope this explains a lot for anyone who's been having troubles with leather. There are many other directions you can take leather, of course, but this should give you a basis for experimentation. Enjoy!
All pictures and content of this site are copyright 2005 Kristen Perry.
No reproduction, distribution or public display allowed
without written consent by Kristen Perry.