To be honest, the first one I did was back painted. Which was looking good until I slipped with the skew and shredded the poor thing. Unfortunately I didn't have time to back paint the blank again. The new owner of the pen really likes the shine of the tube inside so I wasn't going to argue with him on it.
BTW, the buckeye burl is from BenPen. I bought a box of his scraps to cast with.
Thank you all for your kind words. I am hoping to improve on my craft.