Verlinden Carabinier General Bust

I've been working fairly consistently on the Verlinden Carabinier General bust that I posted about in my last wntry. There's actually a number of reasons I haven't yet posted a progress update for a few reasons, and none of them have to do with me not painting - quite the opposite!

1. Although (near as I can tell) the masking off of the painted areas in preparation for airbrushing went excellently - as in, the Tamiya thin yellow masking tape was neatly applied and any remaining gaps covered over with tiny amounts of UHU Tac - I decided not to airbrush the metallics and just tore all the masking stuff off. The reason being that I figgered any "texture" which accidentally showed up as a result of brush painting the helmet would make any weathering all the more believable/easier.
2. Getting the colors "right" took a while. I started painting the non-steel-colored areas of the helmet a nice copper color, which sounded good based on a respectable color guide I found online - the problem is that I didn't read the guide quite carefully enough, and his helmet was "supposed" to be a "yellow copper" (i.e., brass?) instead of a thorough red-based copper with verdigris and all. I also had to come up with a copper paint recipe, since I conveniently don't have any copper paint and I was too cheap to go buy some. Turns out I found a great color mixture for copper in combining GW Dwarf Bronze and OOP GW Shining Gold... the upside to all this color tomfoolery is that his breastplate is supposed to be plated in copper as a Carabinier officer, and I figgered out the right color glazes to turn copper into more of a brass/bronze (yellow ink, sepia, GW Swooping Hawk Turquoise, GW Devlan Mud, and a bunch of other stuff I played by ear highlight-wise).
3. I didn't want to post pictures until both sides were done. After I converted the whole helmet over to a more brassy color, I went and grunged up half of it as a test. It now looks like what I'm told is bronze, but in comparing it to samples online I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say it's rilly rilly rilly dirty brass. Whatever. When I went back to get the right side of his helmet to match the left, I didn't have the color quite right - I think I've fixed that now. Oh, and I wanted to add trompe l'oeil denting and scratch effects to his helmet, which at this scale were a little more involved than what I'm used to in painting 25mm and 28mm figs.

*deep breath*

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! The remaining (obvious) metal details of the helmet will be done as steel, but I'm going slowly so as to keep pace with the rest of the MHMC guys. I was about 2-3 months behind, caught up in the space of a week of frantic painting, and now I think I'm slightly ahead. I think I'm done with the face and eyes, though...