Trying some hand-painting decoration

Having the lid to the reservoir box stained and sitting around for a while, I kept thinking that it looked like a big rectangle begging for some sort of decoration. I've also been wanting to practice a little hand-painting of designs, so I figured this would be a good testing location - If it worked well, great. If not, then it's really hidden inside the organ and wouldn't be subjected to close inspection anyway.

So I looked around the web for a design/decoration that would fit in with my overall concept of the organ, and I found this image, which I really liked for several reasons:

I brought the image into Photoshop and did some stretching so it would fit in with the aspect ratio of the area I intended to put it on the reservoir box lid. I also ditched the little crown on top, and I made it a multi-layer image with separate layers for the black fill area and the gold outline area.

I set up an LCD projector which I connected to my computer and rigged it up on an overhead stand so that it would project the computer screen to my table top. I aligned the reservoir box lid and once everything was lined up, I used some gaffer's tape to hold the lid into position. I then turned off the black fill layer of the image and started work painting in all of the gold outline areas. (I used Testor's model paints for both the gold and the gloss black.)

Once I had the gold areas pretty much filled in, I turned off the projector and touched up any areas that needed it.

After letting the gold layer dry overnight, I returned to the painting, this time with the black fill layer visible.

I used a fine-tipped cheap brush and worked my way very slowly. I don't have much experience in this kind of painting - most of my painting has been of the roller and tray variety.

And here's what I wound up with. Once it dries completely, I'll drill the hole for the relief valve and get to work on the cloth...

Incidentally, the original design is the monogram of Johann Sebastian Bach, which cleverly contains the initials JSB. I thought this was very fitting for the John Smith Busker.