I've travelled through Spain, married a half Cuban girl but I live in Texas. A lot of our products have Spanish on them due to our large mexican population.
Try casting with a bronzen powder...it would do wonders for you bust. The ratio is something like 50% of the total resin volume in powder. Afther the cast buff it up with steelwool and some shoe polish!
Been doing some paint tests trying to nail what approach to take on the statue.
The book describes the Idol's color this way-
"Totally separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone with its golden or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy."
I picked up a number of variations of pre mixed acrylic greens and some glazing medium for added transparency for the faux-stone tests. I kinda have an idea how I want to approach the final finish but I thought trying some trying some stranger variations might result in happy accidents.
I think got some pretty interesting textures and effects. Lots of transparent layering is really gonna be the main trick to achieving a realistic stone feel.
One interesting note while researching real stone statues is that a lot of striations and color variations in the stone tend to hide sculptural detail.
As opposed to a statue where the color change is minimal-
Also a High gloss kills much of the sculptural detail too. I was originally going to aim for a polished Jade feel until I compared a matte/semi gloss to a high gloss finish. The gloss has a cool slick quality but the forms get lost and the errors in your sculpting really stand out. That said I'm sure I'll gloss up one of the painted test statues to see how it looks.
The base is automotive Black Primer. It's not a pure black and has a slight metal nature to it that I really like.
Then using a natural sea sponge I applied a few layers of dark green acrylic glazes. Like I mentioned in my previous post I tried to keep the color variations fairly minimal and understated. Flecks of gold acrylic were applied with a tootpick and smudged to avoid a "brush" feel to the marks.
I sprayed the whole thing with a Rustoleum matte finish clear coat and was initially bummed at how rough the finish came out after the spray had dried. I'm not sure if I was spraying too far away or what. It spattered a little bit too. Very granular in nature. However the texture ended up giving the Idol an even more "stone like" quality. Most of the ancient statues I had researched were usuallly of a rougher and more weathered finish. I suppose this is from gradual erosion over hundreds of years. Later on, this texture also grabbed the weathering wash nicely.
The thing is looking pretty cool at this stage so it really hurt to go the next step with the antiquing wash.
In order to mimic eons of dirt and grime and a sense of history, I push in washes of tan and burnt umber acrylic paints into the crevices of the statue and then wipe away most of leaving smeary bits in all the details. The effect is really striking in real life as you are doing the process. All of a sudden this painted chunk of resin looks a million years old.
I did this initial test on a really bubbly messed up casting-
The little bubbles almost look cool though. I might do one with some pitting in places.