Painting the Cygnus and battle damage looked to be more demanding than the preceding steps.

Great job Romain. Very courageous of you to take this on. I think its much easier to talk strategy or unbox a mini than it is to do anything like this.

I like really defined shadow lines for eyes, so I avoid any washes, as I think it dulls the contrast / edge line. Just a preference thing, but I like a thin pure black edge line to help make the eye pop with contrast.

I find that I prefer a glowing eye effect where the eye is almost white with just a hint of color (pretty much what you did here), and the reflected area around the eye has more color. This makes the glow appear to be extremely bright… just a taste / preference thing. Another, perhaps too subtle consideration is that as the source of the light is the eye, you should highlight the inside ridges. I see a lot of attempts at glowing eyes, etc, that are unsuccessful because the highlighting does not accurately consider the directionality of the wavelength / light source location. Also, the problem with blue glow on blue armor – hard to make it clearly look like glow as opposed to highlight. I think I would pull in just a bit of red or yellow, just enough to make it be slightly different in hue.

Good overview on how to shade yellow. That’s one I have always had trouble with.

Argh, the tip on that detail brush is driving me crazy….

You know, I don’t mind seeing the close up camera on screen, why don’t you request that they set up the detail camera behind your shoulder, so you are not painting in such an awkward position?

Hmm bad edit on the second bit of battle damage, you were working on it and then it was suddenly done, but you couldn’t see it…

The verdigris / oxidization, it seems a bit bright because its on the shady side of the model? When you look at the final model in rotation, it almost looks like there is some strange light source coming from behind and below that is lighting up the underside of the model. (This is my only real criticism, everything else is just comments.)

Just some personal preference stuff…
Would you, if you wanted to add more contrast, shade the bolts / rivets on the model with a wash or direct application? I find that rivets and bolts get lost on these models if the edge of the join is not shaded. It does take time to do it but I think its worth it…

Excessive realism: I think you need to determine, for an entire army scheme, the level of realism / battle wear you are going for so that it is consistent throughout your army. I also agree that a little goes a really long way. I’ve seen otherwise great looking armies diminished due to excessive attempts at realistic battle damage and wear. Of course this is a stylistic choice, but I find that dirty, heavily damaged armies just don’t appeal to me.

Why no specular highlighting? Just a level of detail choice?