Summer Hobby Challenge: Ferrus Manus and Horus Lupercal Week 8 Update

I’ve done very little to Ferrus Manus this week, as my parents have been here to stay, but I think it’s the kind of very little that is very important. As you know from last week, the flesh and majority of the base is done. So this week, I got to start working on the metal sections.
There is a lot of metal on Ferrus Manus, he’s the Forge Master, the one who spends lots of time working on weapons and tools. So it’s only fitting that his armour is covered in metal parts, and he has those mechadendrites on his back.
To start this off, I gave it a basecoat of Citadel Leadbelcher, as I’ll be mainly following my Iron Hands metal scheme, found here:

The metal always looks a bit stark when you basecoat it, due to not having much depth. But it will look a lot better once the washes and highlights go on.
(I scraped a bit of paint from the back so that when I glue his backpack on it is gluing resin to resin, and not paint to paint.)
The next step was to, carefully, applying a coat of Citadel Warplock Bronze to all the parts that are going to be brass in the end. This was quite tricky as there are some really small parts. (I used a Windsor & Newton Series 7 size 1 brush, which keeps a perfect point if you look after it):

And that’s it, for this week. As I said, not a lot. But really, that’s most of the base colours done now. This coming week I will have to cram a bit of painting in, but all I need to do now is shade and highlight the metal, paint the legion badges (and skulls) and his hair. Then drybrush the base, a small bit of weathering, and he’s done. (Fingers crossed!)
Over to Rob:
It’s the second to last week of the challenge, and for me it’s mainly about the details now. I need to finish detailing on the base, the girders, skulls, and a few MkIII pauldrons which are jutting from the rubble. When I started this section, I’d underestimated the amount of details there is there, so the time I’d allocated wasn’t enough, and that’s why I’m writing this at 0036 hours on Sunday morning.
The first thing I did this week was give the broken and bent girders a good wash of Citadel Seraphim Sepia shade. Because of the brown/orange colour, it adds a nice start to what will hopefully be some decent looking rust.
 

While the Sepia shade was drying I set about working on the pauldrons. Now in our gaming group, for 30K, Mike plays Iron Hands, Chris plays Salamanders, Adam plays Night Lords, and I play Sons of Horus. With my previous posts on baiting your opponent through your models (here), I thought it only fair to have an Iron Hands and Salamanders pauldron in there. As there’s three, I did the last of them in Sons of Horus colours.
The initial colours in order of application for this were:
Sons of Horus – Vallejo Black, Forge World Lupercal Green.
Salamanders – Vallejo German Cam. Bright Green, Citadel Retributor Gold, Citadel Agrax Earthshade Shade.
Iron Hands* – Citadel Leadbelcher, Citadel Nuln Oil Shade, Citadel Agrax Earthshade.
* I know this isn’t the scheme Mike uses for his, but I could copy his method down to the letter, and he’d tell me it was different, and that it wasn’t one of his Iron Hands. However, we all know that, just before the aforementioned Iron Hand went into battle, he had his shoulderpad replaced.
 

I then added Forge World Sons of Horus Green to the SoH pauldron, noting an area of damage on the centre of it, which I painted using a little Leadbelcher, highlighted with Vallejo Model Air Chrome, and washed with Nuln Oil. I freehanded the rear end of a Salamanders logo on the green and gold pauldron before giving it it a wash of Nuln Oil, and a few dabs of Agrax Earthshade just to muddy it up a little. I freehanded the same Iron Hands logo that Mike was applying in his post (here), then washed the whole pauldron in Nuln Oil again.
 

I added another heavy wash of Seraphim Sepia to certain parts of the girders, as I was quite please with how some of the shade had discoloured them, and I’m testing to see how it looks with a little more spread around. The skulls were painted in my standard method of Citadel Rakarth Flesh, washed with Seraphim Sepia and then details picked out with Ushabti Bone.
 

The final thing I managed for this week was to add some Citadel Dry Ryza Rust. I used this like a normal drybrush, but rather than brushing it across the edges of the girders, I jabbed it into the areas I’d darkened with Seraphim Sepia, and then dragged it across a few areas to add an orange tint to them. I’m pretty happy with the overall results.
 

So, at the end of the week, the base looks like this:
 

Thanks for reading!

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