Well, I have progresses.. um.. very little. There is a reason for this, well one besides not getting out of bed until half twelve, and I had problems with the skull and blade.
I decided to give the skull a wash to darken the front a little, then using a lighter colour I washed the bone in this to try and tie the large difference together. What happened was odd. The highlighted section (rear facing) went really, really white and chalky. Then I wash it again, the same. So after various attempts I went back and redid the front of the skull - this was because a shading wash made it look really dark brown and well... "not very good" to paraphrase. Looks OK now, but you can see a clear split in the 'halves' which I'm not fully happy on, but we'll see.
Then the blade. I washed it with various layers of scorched brown and Tamiya Clear Orange to represent 'wear, tear, and ageing'. This was OK, but hard to see due to the basecoat being so dark (note, rusting etc seems to work best over a clean layer; chainmail or mithril silver perhaps). Then I got onto the blood. This was the problem. The first adding (Tamiya Clear Red) made it look like I had just painted a blocked strip across the blade. But on the reverse it came out OK. So, back to washing to try and do something with the 'block'. Failed, so I drybrushed mithril silver and started with the 'weathering' again. Hence why the two sides don't look exact.
The blood worked out OK, but I need to practice using it.
The staff however went OK. Using VMC Burnt Umber and Flat Earth I got a nice dark looking staff.
So, either with a few problems I don't think it's terrible; though the pictures don't show everything up all that well. Next stage: grey highlights on the front, then to start the green on the rear before trying my hands at glowing eyes.
All comments welcome.
KU