When we lived in Northumberland I’ll never forget the first time I saw the wild goats in the Cheviot hills. Once in awhile you get lucky and see them in the fields when they come down to graze where the sheep are. I’ve always wanted to draw or paint them but haven’t gotten to yet.
But since moving to the Scottish Borders we found a new source of wild goats that are even easier to spot. There is a huge expanse of moorland between Newcastleton and Langholm where there’s a population of wild goats.
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When I lived in New York, I had many different kinds of goats as pets. We had what I would call a hobby farm, all kinds of animals just for fun. For the goats I had two Pygmy, a Toggenberg, a Nubian, a pedigree Blood bay Oberhausely then years later I was given a herd of five Cashmere goats. They were so cool, each one had different looking horns and personalities to match.
You can see there are very interesting color and pattern variations in the goats coats. I especially like the black and white ones but the black ones are cool as they shed out their brown winter hair. I can’t wait to try painting some with that wispy hair blowing in the breeze!
Above is one of the studies I did from my photographs, it’s the left one in the photo above this. I had them on my computer screen and sketched them in pencil first, then I used various weights of permanent ink pen to draw.
This fella with the eerie looking eyes, is the black goat on the right in the picture. The original ink drawing is only 3″ so it’s enlarged a lot here.
This one was very good looking with white patterns, long horns and a nice black beard! The goats up on Langholm Moor are quite used to seeing people, they don’t run away but won’t let you get too close. If you did get close enough, or the wind blew towards you, you’d also notice their pungent smell, a typical thing with breeding goats.
I think this one would make a nice painting, with the grasses and it’s long hair down the spine.
Just look at the moor behind them, so vast! The goats have a long history of living up on the moors, locals tell us they remember their grandparents talking about seeing the goats. It is believed that they have been around since the Iron age, kept by the people of that time as livestock or they are from domestic livestock that were abandoned during the Highland Clearances in the 1700’s.
This is the goat on the right in the picture above. After looking at it again, I felt I wanted to add more hairs to darken up the black areas, but for now I’ll leave it.
This drawing is actually the same goat but it’s turning it’s head away. You can really see the long hairs down the spine and on it’s back haunches.
This was a great picture but too bad the nanny has some bushes in front of her face! I still think it might work well for a painting. They like to use their long horns to reach back and scratch their back sometimes. Last year, on a very cold day in winter, I was able to catch a little video of two billy’s head slamming their horns together, just like you see on a nature documentary! It wasn’t the greatest video because they were down hill in the bracken, I hope I can catch that action better this year.
This little sketch is actually that nanny in the picture above, I tried to draw her without the leaves and I guess it worked. It’s a very small sketch, only about 1 1/2″.
This photo I wanted to show you the setting because I think it’s so beautiful and the goats love laying on and jumping on the rocks. I think this will be one of the scenes I’d like to paint. It’ll be hard to decide how much to zoom in to show the goats, and not leave out the landscape. That line you can see coming down from right to left, just under the brown bracken, is actually where the road is we came in on. It’s so vast up on the moors.
Here’s the ink drawing of the pair. I had to look at photos of other goats to draw the nanny’s feet since you can’t see them in the photo.
That’s all the photos I have to share here but I do have nice video clips that I’d like to put together and upload to youtube to share. Gary, my husband, put together a video using clips that I shot this day and he used AI to generate a fantastic song. It really is a great song and the words are poignant. Here’s the link to that, you really must go have a listen. https://youtu.be/gk7TaPHTcKk?si=3GN2g7eGj7m0TzD8 I put the entire song lyrics in the description area under the title. (And if you notice the video kind of bobbles around a bit, it’s because there was a big nanny goat somewhere behind me making warning snorts and stamping at me, so I had to keep my eye on her while filming!)
The video was in response to the current wild goat herds on the moor being in danger of mismanagement or ‘no’ management I should say. In the past the goat numbers were controlled, just like deer, they have no natural enemy now. A lot of stress has arisen locally, because the lack of communication from the company called Oxygen Conservation, that bought a huge block of the moor. They culled (killed) a great number of goats this past spring, when they had their kids! It’s upset many locals because no one was told about this. Oxygen Conservation sells carbon credits to companies, it’s called ‘green washing’. That’s where they plant trees when a company pays them for something that isn’t tangible, but makes a company look good in the eyes of the public or investors.
They don’t want the goats to nibble on their trees basically. The real plan of the company is to put up huge wind turbines on the moor, to be seen from miles around and ruin the Scottish countryside. Well there’s a petition to save the goats submitted to the Scottish Parliament, so we’ll see what happens. Gary and I have nothing against the proper management of the goats, but not an uncontrolled culling because you think you have the right. We will be watching what happens.
I’ll be sure to share more sketches and paintings when I do them, please leave me any comments I love reading them. And keep an eye on my website, I’ve been changing the whole layout and design. Soon I’ll be adding a proper shop and start by selling my notecards then prints etc. Cheers all!
