With a little spare time to hand recently, I decided to take a little break from other projects and give a little love to what was previously an art test from nearly a year ago. While the mesh and unwrap was still perfectly fine coming in at 884 tris, the texturing and rendering was completely redone in around the same timescale as the old (roughly a week). Overall I am extremely pleased to get so much use out of such a simple model and keeping it on file was a good call for just such an occassion as this.
The best tip I can offer for anyone else learning the handpainted workflow is to blend, blend, blend! Blending your colours adds so much character and importantly texture to the asset. The inconsistancies are what make it unique!