Distressed Bat

It's really scary to have to distress/age something you've already created. You put in a lot of careful work to make something that looks really nice, and then you have to mess it up on purpose, but equally carefully. It has to be messed up in just the right way. Last night, I finally distressed Harley's bat, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I would assume that the edge of the end of the bat would get a lot of
wear and tear, so I did quite a bit of distressing there.

There's one big spot at the top that seems to have been well-used,
and a smaller area on the flat of the bat where you'd typically
aim to hit the ball (or skull, or whatever you're aiming at as Harley).

A few more little spots. I didn't want to go overboard,
so I just picked a few places that might get used to the point
of wearing off paint, and stopped myself after five or six.

In the reference images, the lines dividing the layers of tape
are very clearly defined. It looks kind of like dirt and grime have
set into it on the edges of the tape. So I colored them black for emphasis.

All I did for distressing it was use a metallic silver Sharpie and my finger to smudge it around quickly before it dried. The tape lines are just black Sharpie (it bled on its own, which I thought looked really cool and gave it a shadow without me doing anything). Also, while smudging one of the spots, my finger slipped and my nail dug a little divot in the side of the bat, since it's just foam. So I silvered it up and made it look like it was damaged in a fight.

So, it was fun, but it was tense. I didn't know if I'd be able to paint over it if I messed up, since I hadn't tested that.