Spent three weeks on my first real bust and the aged skin finally clicked

I did a Maori elder bust last winter and the skin nearly finished me off too. What saved me was switching to oils for the shading. I thinned some burnt umber with white spirit and let it sit in the creases for a minute, then wiped it back off the high spots with a clean brush. Skin on a 1/10 scale bust just behaves differently than a 32mm figure, you get time to move the paint around before it sets and that made all the difference for the crow's feet. On the gold, I had the chalky problem for years until I realised I was laying it on too thick in one go. Now I do a grey undercoat rather than black, then three or four watered down layers of a bright yellow metallic, and I finish with a pin wash of brown around the edges. My last attempt, a Viking brooch, actualy looked like metal for once. The beads would have broken me though. I did a single necklace strand on mine and it took a whole session with a 003 brush and I swore off doing it twice. One trick that helped, I mounted the bust on a cheap lazy susan turntable from a kitchen shop so I could rotate instead of twisting my wrist. Hands stopped cramping and the dots got much more even.

Be keen to see the video when it goes up, I find those long form walkthroughs stick in my head better than written tutorials.

I've done a couple of older subject busts and I actually go the other way on the skin. Instead of light flesh then shading down, I start with a mid dark tone, something like a tanned leather brown, and build the highlights up on top with progressively lighter mixes. The wrinkles come free that way because I'm just catching the ridges with the light colour and leaving the creases alone. Much less nerve racking for me than trying to push glazes into every line and hoping they sit right. The other thing that helped was doing a quick value sketch on paper first, just grey markers, marking where the deepest folds go on the forehead and around the mouth. Took ten minutes and saved me from repainting the whole face twice like I did on my first attempt at a 1/12 sailor bust. For the eyes I've had better luck doing them before any surrounding skin detail. Once the eyelids are finished I'm too scared to go near them again, so I get the iris and highlight in early while I can still wipe mistakes off with a damp brush.

Also, a magnifier lamp with a 3 diopter lens made the bead work bearable for my eyes. I could do a full strand in an evening instead of squinting and calling it done early.

That two pass gold thing clicked for me too after years of chalky mess. My fix was a bit different though, I stopped thinning the metallics at all and just used less paint on the brush, almost drybrushing it on in stages. Seemed backwards but the shine stayed put. On the eyes, what finally sorted me out was a cheap magnifier lamp from a craft shop. Sounds like overkill but painting a single iris without one was pure guesswork. Did a Native American bust a couple years back and the third eye redo dropped to one attempt once I could actually see what I was doing.