On the last journal, I'd wrapped up the skin tones (mostly) and laid in most of the gold NMM. From here I started to work on the leather surrounding the gold patterns. I wanted to avoid my usual warm leather (like I did on Craig Scrapfiggs) and aim for something a bit more desaturated.
To achieve this I started with a base of Burnt Skin, keeping it thin to allow the zenithal highlighting to do some of the work. I started the coat at roughly the mid-point between total black and full white as the opacity of the paint and the natural darkness of the brown meant I could quickly build a good looking shadow coat. Once this was laid in I added some vanilla white and stippled a texture onto the previous coat, through this I was able to create something that looked like this:
One thing you'll also notice on this is that I re-did the gold NMM on the chest bangle/band in the background. The more I looked at it the more I felt the gold was too warm in relation to everything else on the model. I also put some NMM iron/silver on the studs on the shoulder and the wrist band.
This was done using the same general mix I use for greyish NMM. I start with a Burnt Umber base and then add thin coats of a mix of Burnt Umber and Pastel Blue. I find this gives a nice bluish grey that works really well for more matte NMM.
Finall I started to work on getting some colour on the jacket of the bust. Using the arm as a guinea pig I decided to start with a base of Prussian Blue. This was applied again using thin coats and using the total black as a shadow point to further pull the lighting to the front of the model. I then mixed in Pastel Blue in increasing quantities to use for the highlights, this was applied with stippling and made use of the natural textures of the model to create the following effect:
This is starting to really come together now and soon I'm gonna have to think about a plinth for this as I'm pushing through a lot quicker than I thought I would.