TET Artwork Diary: Cats, Goats, and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon, Number Six

You wouldn't know it from this blog, where I reference it a handful of posts, but I am a big fan of the rebooted 2003 Battlestar Galactica Series. Which is how I come to be Facebook following the series most recognised Cylon, Six - well the actress who plays six anyway, Tricia Helfer.

One thing you'll learn pretty quickly about Tricia is that she owns a lot of rescue cats - and that she's more at home being a farm/country girl, surrounding herself with animals than she is living in cities - though she definitely seems to drift between the two worlds with ease.

Cats and Goats

Tricia with Larry and Earl.
Still from Tricia Helfer's
FB Video.

However, this is a blog post about a cat and goats, specifically Trica's Goats, Larry and Earl, that currently live at the Farm of the Free. She posted a video of herself visiting them on her Facebook. Click the link for the full video.

Cat at Farm of the Free
with Tricia, Larry, & Earl.
Still from Tricia Helfer's
FB Video.

In that video we get a very brief, over the shoulder footage, by Tricia of Larry the Goat looking at a cat, who I assume is a resident of the farm? Anyway, said cat seems completely unconcerned about being in the presence of Larry.

I saw this and my mind went flash, who else thinks they're the goat - well, The G.O.A.T.? Cats, of course, just ask one... they did win the internet after all!

That was the moment I had the inspiration for my next cat painting which will be loosely based on this cat and Larry, but not necessarily them, because I barely know Larry, and I've seen about three seconds of this cat (at best).

My thought was to paint a picture of a cat and a goat staring at each other with a knowing look that they both know who the real G.O.A.T. is.

Obviously the painting has to be titled 'Who is the Goat?'

Sketching the Idea

My first pass at a goat character in my
cat art style incorporating a wide head.

Sketching the idea, the first problem to solve was creating a goat character that would fit in with the style of my cats. My initial thought was to give my goat a wide, flat head similar to the wide heads of my cats.

I was quite happy with the first version of my goat until I started trying to place it in a composition with a cat. 

With the goat being taller than a cat, it seemed obvious the painting would need to be in a portrait orientation (40 x 50cm canvas) to minimize the amount of background needed - because I like to focus on characters and keep the backgrounds extremely minimal.

Here you can see compositions
of the cat and the goat where I
decide that giving the goat a
longer face works better.

However the wide head on the goat was problematic to fit in largely because goat ears tend to stick out directly to each side, making the wide head even wider.

So I then took the same design for my goat's head but made the shapes longer rather than wide. What I ended up with still felt in keeping with the structure and style of my cats.

Once I settled with the direction my goat was going my next problem was to make sure this was a cat painting with a goat in it, as opposed to a goat painting with a cat in it.

To achieve this, the cat needed to be in the foreground while the goat needed to be some distance away in the background but in a forced perspective kind of way so they both could be standing at the same level on the ground.

While I think what I came up with works compositionally with just the goat and the cat, I added some of my signature flowers for scale - so the image doesn't just look like a giant cat next to a small goat.

My final Cat and Goat composition with flowers added for scale and distance.

I may have to tweak the facial expressions slightly but otherwise I think the composition is working really well. The cat is clearly the focus, and you need to look past the cat to see the goat.

Importantly they are exchanging looks. I think the cats expression is about right while the goat seems a little unsure about being the G.O.A.T.

Just to give you an idea of time frames, I started this artwork April 12th. The amount of work you see here I could've probably done in an afternoon but was actually done, a bit here, a bit there over the course of two weeks.

As I may have said in an earlier art post I'm trying to be more intentional, and not rush my latest artworks. I don't want to become a machine again, trying to create a new artwork every week. No one is clamoring to get their hands on my art ASAP so why rush?

I am ready to start painting this artwork. My color thoughts are greys, black, and white, for the goat and the cat, with a green/yellow gradient background to represent the country/farm environment.

I'll get onto that in the coming weeks.

If you'd like to see more of my art, I just upgraded my Art Time Productions Website, where you can see my latest Whimsical Art Cats, and buy the originals, or prints.

Alternatively you can check out even more of my art cats, and buy prints from my Redbubble Store.