Summer Hobby Challenge: Ferrus Manus and Horus Lupercal Week 6 Update

I know I keep saying this, but I feel like I’m getting nowhere fast with this model. Check out last week’s update to see where we got up to so far. As you can see, it’s slow going. But I suppose it’s important not to rush a model that’s this special.
I wanted to make sure that I did the best possible paint job on Ferrus Manus. So in areas where I might normally take a shortcut that looks good on the tabletop, I’ve done a few extra steps to make it look as good as my ability will allow.
Carrying on with the flesh, the first thing I did was re-emphasis the shading with Citadel Druchii Violet. (Around the eyes, nose, temples, cheek-bones, ears, and under muscles). Again, like last time, I thinned this with a bit of Forge World Clear Medium:
 

(You may notice that the skin tone is very glossy – this is because of the clear medium – this will be tones down at the end when I give the whole model a matt varnish.)
To make sure that the flesh wasn’t too dark, I then mixed a little Citadel Cadian Fleshtone with Vallejo Flesh Highlight and re-highlighted the very extreme parts of the flew. (Brow, bridge of the nose, jawline, cheek bones, etc.):
 

Then repeat the glaze of Citadel Lamenter’s Yellow, thinning with Clear Medium:
 

And a final re-emphasis of the Druchii Violet shading:
 

As the flesh was quite yellow looking, a very small amount (just a small brush load) was added to Vallejo Flesh Highlight, which was then heavily thinned with Clear Medium until it was watery in consistency. This was used as a glaze over the highlights to make the flesh look a little paler and greener, like Ferrus spends most of the time indoors in his forge:
 

A final dot of Citadel Skull White was painted on as an extreme highlight in the direction of the light source:
 

The next thing, and the thing I was most terrified of was Ferrus’s metallic arms. To get this effect, Vallejo Gunmetal Blue was painted onto the hands, and solidly up to a line where I wanted to start the blending with the main flesh colour. From there on it was then feathered.
Feathering is a process of really thinning the paint down, then while it is drying, use a clean, but slightly damp brush, to lightly brush the paint in motions towards the colour you are blending with. You can build this up over layers, but I wanted it to be quite a light blend. You can see both stages below:
 

Finally, for now, I mixed Gunmetal Blue with Ironbreaker. This was actually about 25%:75%. And this was painted over the pure Gunmetal Blue as a highlight:
 

This week I actually painted the base separately on another day. I guess I was enjoying painting the flesh that much.
I painted the silver on the Iron Hands as per my previous article, using Citadel Ironbreaker as the highlight, but for the Emperor’s Children I wanted their metal to look more pristine, less industrial. For them I layered again with Citadel Leadbelcher, then highlighted with Citadel Runefang Steel. I drybrushed all the other metal on the base with Citadel Necron Compound, a dry paint.
For the gold on the Emperor’s Children, I based with Citadel Retributor gold, shaded with Citadel Riekland Fleshshade, layered with Citadel Auric Armour Gold, then finally a highlight of Citadel Runefang Steel. I also painted Runefang Steel into the areas of battle damage modelled onto the miniatures. (Ironbreaker on the Iron Hands). You can see all this below:
 

The flesh is finally starting to look like a completed model. There’s still a fair bit to do though, including all that silver and brass, and we haven’t even seen Ferrus’s backpack in weeks.
Over to the traitor…
Thanks, loyalist scum.
This week, between building TTCombat buildings for Mantic Games Walking Dead: All Out War and painting pox walkers, I managed to do a fair bit of work on the Warmaster’s base.
The first part, was to build up the colour on the stone parts of the base so that it was fairly bright, to contrast the Warmaster’s black armour. To do this I used watered-down Vallejo Ivory on the eagle’s head.

After an hour of watered down layers, it really didn’t look that much different, and I decided to dry-brush the Ivory instead. I also started to dry-brush Vallejo Basic Skintone onto the stairs, rubble and bannister to give it more colour.


Now dry-brushing isn’t the best way to paint, and always seems to leave a kind of grainy finish, so I will be going over it with thinned Ivory and Basic Skintone to smooth it out. I really like the way that the dry-brushing brought out the lettering on the stairs, and I’m aiming to highlight them so that they stand out a lot more.
The grey stone I dry-brushed with Vallejo London Grey.

I was pleased with the contrast that the Grey, Skintone and Ivory were starting to have as I built up a few layers of each. To highlight the London Grey, I dry-brushed the mixes of London Grey and Ivory until it was only slightly darker than the flat Ivory, which brought the broken edges of the eagle and the eagle itself together.

I decided that, if the eagle’s head was part of a magnificent statue, then it would have a little grandeur, so painted it as a huge red gemstone using the same method as our Youtube video linked here.
I based the eye with Mephiston Red, then built up crescents of lighter shades on the bottom and left sides of the eye. Finally, I highlighted the lower edge with Vajello White, and added a spot of white to the top right of the eye. Around the spot of white, I used some Citadel Druchii Violet shade to darken the Mephiston Red in that area.

Finally, I painted the metal girders with Citadel Air Lead Belcher (sadly not as all covering as the Vallejo equivalents, so I needed two layers), and this leaves them ready to rust up and weather next time.

Apologies if it’s not that exciting an update today, I wanted to try and plough through the base so I could then finish off with more detailing on it, and then finally finish Horus. With only a few weeks to go, I feel I’ve a lot left to do.
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