I have had a long time project for a beast man fantasy army in the works for a long time. It started with buying figures for the army back in the days of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I picked up a few sets of chaos beast men models and have been adding to the collection ever since. My old GW army is now a future Ninth Age Beast Herd army in waiting. Every so often, I break into the collection and pull something out to paint. Lately, I have painted a few duel use models for the army, testing a couple of grey and white themes techniques along the way.
The current project is Gargoyle/Harpy models from Wargames Foundry. These are older models, but still available. You have two different versions to choose from. One is with bat wings and the other with bird wings. I opted for the bird wings, as I just preferred the look.
The models themselves are old school metal and are single part models. No glueing required! Well, except for gluing the figures to the bases. There are three different poses to work with. I wanted a little more variation, so out came the pliers! I put a large rubber band around the middle of the wings and bent each model’s wings to give different angles. This was something I used to do with arms on old GW models to give the same minor variation.
The models were all sprayed gray. I then hit the models with a black wash. This was followed up with a few levels of lighter gray dry brush. I then hit the fur and feather areas with a light blue wash. This was followed up with a heavy white dry and wet brush to bring out those sections. I then painted all the details with black and red.
I finished up the models by adding a ballast base, painted dark brown. That was dry brushed up to tan and I then added some Scenic Express Summer mixed flocking. A little dry brush and they are ready to go. So if you are looking for some nice models for your army, don’t forget about those old metal scruples on the market, they have a place in any army.
- Manteuffel