Yesterday, while reading The Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors, I came across a word I didn’t know: “caprine.” In a painting of the sisters, “the artist had given their faces a caprine quality.” A quick dictionary lookup said it means “relating to or resembling goats.” Yikes.
But I was delighted to find a new word for one of my favorite animals. Then it hit me: my last name, Bouc*, also means goat! (Billy goat, actually.) I immediately had to find a goat photo to sketch for the day’s self-portrait.
Which version do you like better? I think I should have stopped with the quirkier, more curious, more me, colored pencil version. But I wanted to keep playing and added Neocolor II crayons on top. One day I might learn to stop sooner rather than later.
*Bouc was my ex-husband’s family name, but I kept it after we parted. I’ve had that last name much longer than my father’s last name — a name I never liked and that wasn’t even really ours. My grandfather, a refugee from Kiev, was given it at Ellis Island because they said his real name couldn’t be spelled in English.
Me if I was a goat, photo reference:
Jana Bouc, Artist 