I made this one back in the Orivesi College of Arts in 2006. We had an artist in residence there from Germany who taught us this old tehcnique for iconography, which she used in her own work that uses contemporary newspaper images.
We first applied several layes(10+) of rabbit glue gesso on a board. Each layer was sanded very fine before applying the next one. The block could then be drawn on, carved and gilded. The guilding process was quite intricate as you'd expect and can't say that I recall it exactly. A layer of fine clay with glue was brushed on the board and smoothed out and the leaf gold would go on top of that.
My project was the goddess Eris as I was still very enamored with Discordianism after few years of my "awakening". Mary Louise Parker from Weeds would serve as the model as i quite fancied her and liked the show a lot back then. It didn't end up looking like her though. The image was traced and transfered on with pencil with some alterations and then inked. I carved a greek temple after a quick study and applied some watercolor on the board and sanded it down a bit. It cracked as i was warned but I was fine with that. A lot of things went wrong with the picture but i suppose it is expected with the subject.