My suggestion is even more radical, extending your suggestion: use the graining technique for all of it on top of something easily worked, such as poplar. Of course, that would mean finding someone with highly developed graining skills, but they exist and nowadays frequently describe themselves as faux finishers.
That is exactly how I made veneers for Mercedes cars. From the mid eighties they have stuck their veneer to a thin sheet of aluminium, about 0.7mm, and I assume press it like that to get some surprising double curvatures. Apparently the idea was that the aluminium layer prevents the veneer splintering in an accident. I made casts of the parts in body filler, then cut the veneer to shape, steamed it, and clamped it unglued to dry. It takes on the shape, but sometimes splits, so quite a few rejects. But if not split then just glue up as normal. Doing this on something the size of the OP's project would be a challenge.
