Antoninus Pius and Gradient Maps

So back in early November, I got a chance to be in London for a handful of days. My wife was on a work trip in the city so I tagged along and while she was working hard, I was putting my feet to the ground to get to the museums as fast possible. I took a ton of pictures of a lot of artworks and historical objects and figured I would use them as practice and to remind myself of what I've seen. So here is the first one in what should be a series!

This bust of Antoninus Pius was practically the first thing I saw as I came in to the British Museum. If you don't know, Pius was part of the "Five Good Emperors of Rome." He was not a big reformer and more of a conservative than his predecessors. However, he performed his role dutifully which is how he got the name Pius which means 'dutiful'

If youre interested in learning a little more, check out this link about the Five Good Emperors
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Five-Good-Emperors
Rome wouldnt have it this good ever again, and probably only a portion of it as good until Diocletian in east.

For this piece, I decided to paint in BW and then give it a go in Clip Studio using gradient maps. If you dont know, gradient maps basically take your values and assign them a color you pick out. You can quickly change out a BW piece for full color version using this method. Pretty cool stuff. It can save you a lot of work and lets you focus on your composition and value. Ill probably use this method in the future a lot more. You can see the black and white version below as well as an earlier color version that I ultimately decided against as I thought the colors were a little too distracting