A visit to the goat

Last week I picked up a little project I started much earlier.

Occasionally I participate in a tender, but usually the competition for that is quite fierce. That's what I found out a few years ago, when a school in Waalwijk asked for a design for a statue of the faun Pan, after a bronze statue of Pan in front of the school was stolen . I made a small scale model in plasticine, with the idea to carve it in granite.

Because the design was not chosen, it ended up in a corner, but I still thought it was a droll statue, and decided to enlarge it to 90 cms.

I enlarged the model out of greenish foam, a kind of easy to work isolation foam, that can be worked quite detailed. But when I got to the legs, I realised I didn't know exactly how goat's hoofs look like.

Luckily there is a petting zoo near my shop, and a goat lives there. A small goat. With permission from the owners (….? What's that crazy sculptor doing near our goat?) I went to the goat in hopes of getting her to leave her den, but she didn't feel much like it. She found me scary, I think.

Above, my 'best’ photo!

But I knew enough, and I wasn't far off. I ahd of course been near a goat before (though I do think she's in need of another pedicure…). And luckily there's always the internet, with an incredible database of images.

After that I went to work with plaster. There is still a lot of work to do, but I enjoy it, because it could become quite a cheerful sculpture for somewhere in a garden . I can already imagine it in red granite.

To the next post about this project.