intro
I've got a friend that really likes goats, so I decided to get them one for their birthday.
Unfortuantely, it's only a paper mache goat I found in a local arts & crafts store. They were selling various plain, brown, animal-shaped objects, so I just picked one I thought looked kind of like a goat (admittedly I think it's a sheep). I thought it would be fun to paint it.
to start
To start I gave it a white coat (originally it was brown). After that dried, I gave it a second white coat.
Doing this gave me a feel for the brush I was using and a chance to get to use the paints I had
borrowed from the person who's birthday it was.
adding details
I painted some details next - wanted to try out the black paint and position things. The face required a few practice runs on paper.
Next, I realised that horns were going to be needed... At the moment it looked more like a sheep or something.
I made the horns by ripping right-angled triangles from toilet paper, then wetting my fingers and letting the horn-shaped toilet paper soak up the moisture by gently rolling them about between my fingers. Called it quits for the day then to let them dry.
horny sheep
Didn't do much this time. just moulded the horns into shape and glued to onto the head.
After drying, the horns were a lot more firm than I was expecting. I very gently bent them until they looked nice and curved (like a real goat's horns do).
To glue them on I initially tried using pritt-stick and leaving it to dry, but it didn't really stick great. I ended up carefully using some super glue I had lying about instead.
Now the (sheep?) looked a lot more like an actual goat.
coat
Here's the hard part.
I knew from the start that I wanted to do a black/white/grey coat, ideally in a way that would look like a white coat that was going grey, with black highlights. The aim was for the colours to have a layered kind-of look.
Next, I started to add some black highlights over the grey undercoat on the left side. It didn't turn out exactly as I wanted, the fading wasn't really there, but I think I got the direction of the strokes right and the right level of black for highlights.
I knew it was going to be important to be careful with the black paint when doing the highlights
because I remember an art teacher telling me years ago that black just absorbs all other colour
on a page
.
I had more success when doing the right side. I think I overdid it with the black (not heeding the lesson above), but I managed to get the right kind of fading-layered look I was after by wetting the brush and drying it off slightly before dipping it in the paint. I think this side looked a lot more like what I described in start.
There were several moment where I thought "SHIT TOO MUCH" or "RUINED", but I think in the end it turned out ok. I used a mix of the above technique (wetting the brush) as well as regular strokes. I think I might have gotten a little carried away, but I'm pretty happy with the result.
Here's the colour palette after finishing the coat (it's just a piece of paper with paint on it).
final touches
I added some colour (that wasn't a black, white or grey) to the face for a final touch. I think it helped a lot.
I painted yellow in the eyes - didn't realise goats eyes were yellow until I saw at an image; added some very dark red over the black-line mouth; pink in the ears; and a very beige over the horns.
It looks awful but the whole idea was a half-joke anyway.
gearsix, Feb 2019