Harpies (with a soothing harpy melody) | A Mixed Media Art Project (Utilizing KREA)

*Hounds of Zeus they were called. Dwelling on the name used to identify them, I thought it odd they would be called "hounds". Instantly, this reminded me of an animal that would patrol the bottom landscape, not the air. In Greek Mythology, Harpies were winged-liked creatures under the command of the supreme god of Mount Olympus, Zeus.

Harpies were described as birds with the heads of maidens. Their pale faces resembled fowls of prey hunting for their meals. Long claws protruded from their hands. Roman and Byzantine writers meticulously described these creatures as ugly. However, pottery art and other artifacts depicting the harpies featured beautiful women with wings. Ovid described them as human-vultures.

It appeared to me as though each civilization romanticized these creatures and adopted them into their own versions. But the name remained.

The epic and most celebrated story in which the harpies played a role was that of King Phineus of Thrace. Zeus bestowed upon him the gift of prophecy. Angry that Phineus gave away the god's secret plan, Zeus punished him.

Blinded and cast on an island, at his disposal was a buffet of delicious food. However, he starved as the harpies would come and steal the food from his hands. Depicted by later writers in alternate scenarios, the harpies either devoured the food themselves or soiled it making it inedible by cover the food with horrible smelling substances.

This harsh treatment of Phineus continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts that is documented in another epic tale.

Throughout history, their appearance softened to include beautiful and alluring creatures that possessed powers to enthrall mortals.

In later literature, the reference to a harpy was meant to convey the personality of a female, whether she be an overbearing person or one with a sharp tongue and quick condescending personalities or reactions to situations.

^Source

For my current mixed media art project, I wanted to explore the mysterious creatures named "Harpies". I loved Greek Mythology, and the harpies piqued my interest. In reading about the romantic habits of Zeus, I could only envision them as beautiful female creatures. Designing the Harpies was a fun exercise by including several of my pure fractals together with stable diffusion images and images created with KREA.

The thumbnail version of the Harpy I created in KREA.

A version I produced in Canva titled "Harpy of the Western Lands" was to share a sharper, more harsher background using the stable diffusion images. I then finished the project im Canva. I envisioned utilizing this version for filtering purposes in KREA.

For variety, I wanted to see how a harpy would look utilizing the program KREA. As a base image, I input my StarryAI image I prepared for the mixed media art project above "Harpy of the Western Lands".

Other KREA filters produced the following variations:

ENJOY the melody that reminds me of a harpy.