ZOMG CHICKEN?!?!!

For my next project I'm going to be trying my hand at a bit of restoration taxidermy. Not sure how old this polecat is but he has a face only a mother could love right now ^^

I really thought I would have to redo the entire head but actually the shape is quite nice, just the eye sockets and placement need to be reworked. I have been looking up pictures of polecats/polecat coloured ferrets and they appear to have completely black eyes? Does anyone have any close up experience with either natural coloured ferrets or polecats and can tell me if solid black eyes would be good/natural?

Another thing that is going to be going is the tongue most likely, its too big and fat, badly painted and is a little damaged. Overall it looks very unnatural. Luckily it's just made of softish wax so shouldn't be too hard to scrape most of it out and just leave a smaller tongue behind or rebuild one myself from clay.

If I can I will try to redo the lips to cover the back teeth a little more, the refs I've looked up seem to all have the back teeth covered by the lips when hissing/fighting like this guy.

Painting will be done on the nose and gums which are currently not painted at all. This is the bit I'm most nervous about, all the tutorials involve using an airbrush so if anyone has any tips on how to paint noses like this one with a brush and what paints I should use and how watered down etc. then that would be great! Right now I've read acrylics are used so I'll probably pick some of those up soon and have a go, maybe practice on a few leather scraps first

The teeth are perfect because they come from an actual skull, the rest of the skull is probably intact inside the head