Harpies

This week, we take a really brief look at Ryan's latest unit: a mix of Privateer Press Farrow models, with Reaper wings glued on them to make Harpies. Honestly, we all know I'd only use Privateer Press models when pigs fly, so this shouldn't be a huge surprise.


Well guys, this one's going to be a lot less in-depth than most of mine have been lately. Lone Wolf is breathing down my neck and I'm highly stressed for time, so I'm forcing through painting and not documenting my process every step. I apologize if this disappoints you, but hey, at least you get to see pictures of models?

Imma give you some harpies

Sometimes, I order miniatures because they're on sale, or it's late and night and I'm not making good decisions, or both. I'd been having a lot of problems figuring out what I was going to do for my harpy units for this Herd army. I wanted something feral, but nothing out there really matched what I was after. In a fit of inspiration from a friend in my gaming group (we were talking alternate Herd models), I realized these Farrow could be pretty simple to convert into what I wanted.
I ordered some extra Reaper feather wings, glued them on, and had a starting point!

Halfway through painting the wings

I pulled a very simple color scheme: I went with the idea to make these colored like the Turkey Buzzard, which is a frequent sight here in south Texas. The body would be brown, the wings brown and grey, and the head would be bright pink. I would use blue for the contrast color (I'd been doing this for the army already), and then do NMM silver/gold to give some high contrast from the natural tones.
I went with a slightly different mix of browns for this one, as I wanted them to be reminiscent of my Eagle unit, but not identical.

Browns:

3 SS Camo Black Brown, 1 Dark Flesh, 1 Medium Grey, 2 Water
3 Dark Flesh, 1 Medium Grey, 1 SS Camo Black Brown, 2 Water
2 Dark Flesh, 2 Khaki, 1 Water
1 Dark Flesh, 2 Khaki, 1 Elf Skin, 1 1/2 Water

Almost done with the browns and greys

For the greys, I started to incorporate a new shade I'm starting to expirement with: Silvergrey. It differs from Medium Grey (which goes brown) and Wolf Grey (which goes blue) in that it doesn't really have a brown/blue pigment shift.  I added to that balance with some medium sea grey, which goes bluer, and bleached bone, which is a brown shade, to keep the balance for the feathers from going into either shade.

Greys:

3 Medium Sea Grey, 2 Black, 2 Water
4 Medium Sea Grey, 1 Water
2 Medium Sea Grey, 2 Bleached Bone
1 Bleached Bone, 3 Vallejo Master Color Silvergrey

Pink headed vulture-pigs!

Finally, for the pink head, I just experimented with a bunch of tints and ended up going very basic: bloody red and Squid Pink, mixed consecutively as I worked. I"m not sure the Turkey Vulture parallel is obvious, but it's certainly unique.

Pink

3 drops Bloody Red
Add 1 drop Squid Pink to the previous layer
Add 2 drops Squid Pink to the previous layer
3 Squid Pink:1 Bloody Red
Add 2 drops Silvergrey to the previous layer

 

A trio from the unit, including the commander

Finally, I used my normal mix for bluess and NMM silver. I experimented with a new NMM gold color scheme, but didn't document it well enough to share the blend, sorry! I'll see if I can recreate it once Lone Wolf is over.

Close-up on the unit champion.

Rank-and-file Farrow from the unit

The completed unit

That's it for now! I hope to have the Tribal Warriors horde done shortly so I can share that, and another unit of Harpies, and the beast pack, and the Brutox! Oh, and the Lycan regiment and horde from #CCKoWAWS are updated; I just need to upload their pictures here to share those out. Three weeks to Lone Wolf; let's see if I can get the army done!