Demon Space Monkey; an Infinity paintjob I don't hate

Well folks, today was a big day for me. As of about 10 hours ago (I'm posting this at nearly 2am...) I am the owner of a car. Without getting too much into boring real life crap, one of my goals this year was to use part of my wages to save for a car. While I may not have earned as much as I could have hoped, I still managed to save a few grand this year, and today went down to the local car yard and to have a look at a vehicle there. Long story short - inspection, test drive, haggling, taking time to arrange insurance and withdraw money (more green than I've ever held in my hands before...), culminating in me owning a 1998 Ford Falcon.
Nothing fancy or anything, but it will hopefully give me a a good few years of service, which is all I want from it.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that exciting piece of news :)

On with painting stuff, and something almost as exciting for me - I painted an Infinity figure! And I like it!

Yes, as my one previous post on here about Infinity shows, I find these gorgeous figures difficult to paint to a standard I find acceptable. Tonight, however, on a whim, I decided that rather than knocking out another base of Epic figures, I'd paint one of my neglected Tohaa models. I didn't have any cohesive idea of what I wanted it to look like, and so it was basically a process of trial and error. The end result, however, I am pretty happy with. The photos show a few areas I need to fix, but otherwise, I think it looks good.
Part of the success I think is my use of more intense colour. This is a recent development in my painting technique, and I plan to write full post on it in the near future, but as is hopefully apparent from browsing my more recent work vs my older stuff (though since this blog is mostly newer models, it's probably not very apparent) is my recent shift to using very intense colours and strong contrasts in painting. Something about these strong colours really appeals to me, it seems to make the paintjobs more vibrant and eyecatching. My painting style really does not lend itself well to the kind of ultra smooth blending that so many of my favourite painters demonstrate, but I'm definitely inspired to try and emulate the amazing work of Mousemuffins from WAU, who does incredible things with colour and contrast.

Enough blather, time for pics. I'd really love feedback and advice on this paintjob, what works and doesn't. Like I said, there are a few things I can see that need touching up, and of course, the base isn't finished. Finally, I'd like to especially mention that the face on this model is my absolute favourite part - it was the first thing I painted and had it not worked I likely wouldn't have finished the model.

Finally, I initially painted the straps in a rainbow effect, from purple to teal. This looked crap, so I repainted it as you see. I did, however, take a photo before fixing it, and thought I'd add it.

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos