3 Tips For Painting On Leather With Acrylics

Looking to paint on leather with acrylic paints? Our head chemist and CEO Steven Patterson talks you through how to prepare the leather, and techniques to make your next leathercraft project on point.

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How to paint on leather


Can you paint on leather with acrylics? Absolutely you can, so the first thing to determine is, is it leather genuine leather or is it or o fake leather or artificial leather? Effectively that's plastic, so we'll talk about real natural leather first, so the first thing is to determine what the surface of the leather is like? So does it already have an oil-based coating or a wax coating, a polish that sort of thing on it? Because if it does, you need to strip that back. Well, as far as you can anyway to allow the acrylic to stick and bond well to the leather, and that will make it last. So to make sure the leather is completely clean, use either a strong detergent or alcohol to take any of those previous surface coatings off so you've got a nice clean surface to start with.

So the first step is to have a bonding coat between the leather and the acrylic. So the sort of thing that you might use is the clear sealer or polymer gloss varnish or one of the polymer varnishes that will be perfect as a sealer for both leather and a primer for the acrylic.

Then you go over the top with the derivan acrylic or the derivan students make sure you don't have too much relief or impasto in the paint you want it to be pretty flat so that if it's a utility item like a handbag or shoes or something like that so that you don't you know make it easier to peel the paint off. Once you have completed your design, you finish your project off with a final finish. Use the polymer gloss varnish or polymer matte if you don't want to sheen to finish off the whole work and completely encase i. This will give it the full strength that you are after.

If it turns out that your handbags shoes, whatever it is that you want to paint, is fake leather a plastic of some sort, there's not a problem there either the best bet make sure the surface is clean. So a detergent washes it down first if it's a slippery shiny high gloss surface, not a problem, but it's a good idea to just scuff the surface up a little bit. So coarse-grained sandpaper not heavily sand sanded but just to scratch it up a bit to allow the clear sealer or the polymer gloss varnish to adhere.

Now use it as a sealing coat to bite in physically key into that surface once you have the surface prepared basically, it's the same as real leather you put on either the clear sealer or the polymer gloss varnish as a sealer. Decorate with one of the Derivan acrylics and then once again finish off with polymer gloss varnish or polymer matte varnish or satin varnish depending on the sheen level that you want to finish with. Hey presto you're done