Halloween and Hans at the Sheldon

My notecards have arrived at the University of Nebraska's Sheldon Museum of Art Museum Shop just in time for Halloween. 

How I wish I could go shopping here. Clearly we are kindred spirits. I would purchase everything I see. Here are my Poe card and Halloween Hedgehog card amidst a lovely Halloween display:

Gorgeous display of Halloween treats. Photo by Genevieve Ellerbee, Registrar Extraordinaire

They are in such good company. Photo by Genevieve Ellerbee

 The incredible thing is that my cards on the rack below are adjacent to an artist whose work hangs in my studio. It's an image of an angel who is gifting the world to an imaginative soul. I love the message. It made me cry when I saw it and my sister Amy bought it as a Christmas present for me. I read it every day.  It makes me very happy to see that I am now sharing space with someone who inspires me.

My Dancing Bear, Brementown Musicians, and Hedgehogs in Love. Photo by Genevieve Ellerbee

Halloween is drawing nigh

Jessica Boehman, "Happy Halloween, Piggy" Pencil Copyright 2012

Quoth the Raven

..."Nevermore."

"Dreaming Dreams (An Ode to Poe)" Pencil and digital color. Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman

My Favorite Halloween Books

Halloween is my favorite day of the year.  My parents were very keen on the holiday, as was my aunt, who would send Halloween packages to our house that were the cause of eager excitement when they arrived.  My mom had Halloween records to play that were riffs on classic songs..."I've Been Working on my Costume"..., "When the Witches go Flying Along...", to which I still remember the lyrics.

But we'd always have a stack of Halloween books to read as well.  My favorites are here. You've heard me speak of #1 before. It's the most classic and won't really scare you but will get you in the spooky mood of the holiday.  The Haunted House and the Goblin are the two best ones for giving you slight chills up your spine.  Jack Prelutsky and Marilyn Hafner are geniuses for shaping my love of this day so much.

Another perennial favorite was Lonzo Anderson and Adrienne Adams' "The Halloween Party", the story of a boy named Faraday Folsom who, on the way to a Halloween party, wanders off into the night forest after a small troll. He's introduced into a world of trolls and witches and tiny elves.  It hits the perfect cold October-air sensation that you only get late in the month, where witches really do lurk in forests and ride their brooms high into the grey clouds that are lit by moonlight in a sapphire sky.

For its sweetness, I loved two other books: "How Spider Saved Halloween" by Robert Kraus, which tells the story of a spider who dresses up as a pumpkin after neighborhood tricksters smash the pumpkin at his friend's house, and "The Biggest Pumpkin Ever" by Steven Kroll, about two mice who unwittingly tend to the same pumpkin in the patch, making it...the biggest pumpkin ever.  

Two books bordered on creepy and TOO CREEPY for me, "In a Dark Dark Room and Other Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" by Alvin Schwartz and "Very Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." 

The first is more for kids, and has become the favorite book my nephew, Gavin:

It's illustrations are cartoonlike but creepy:

 

The second book, also by Schwartz, is the stuff of nightmares. It's illustrated with nightmarish imagination by Steven Gammel. Great job for scaring the CRAP out of me, Mr. Gammel. 

Creepy.

See what I mean?

The last book I've recently found. The watercolor paintings are exquisite and the story is intriguing.  Look for repeating details, like the moths, throughout the book.  It's called "Zen Ghosts" and it is by Jon J. Muth.

It's the most wonderful time  of the year!

Teeny Tiny Bat

Has anyone seen that cheesy, wonderfully weird movie from 1979 called "The Halloween that Almost Wasn't"?  We watched it all the time as kids. It starred Judd Hirsch as Dracula, who works to try to convince the Halloween monsters: the mummy, Frankenstein, the werewolf, and the witch, that Halloween should not end.  It even ends with disco dancing and leisure suits. What's not to like?  In a ridiculous scene where Dracula has to get through a locked door, he shrinks into a tiny bat to squeeze under the door. You can even see the string pulling him through. It's awesome (look at 8:40), as Dracula repeats "Teeny Tiny Bat" to grow smaller:

This one's for you, Dracula!

"Teeny Tiny Bat" Pencil Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

An Ode to the Rats I've Loved

Second in my series for Halloween 2011 is this image that I made while under Hurricane Irene house arrest.  Before rendering and coloring, the sketch of this drawing reminded me of the animated rats and mice that I always admired growing up: Justin from "The Secret of NIMH" (based on the book "Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh" by  Robert O'Brien) and Basil from "The Great Mouse Detective" (based on one of my favorite childhood books, "Basil of Baker Street" by Eve Titus).  They had an intelligent cool factor to them, especially the latter, who was based off of Sherlock Holmes.  I remember squeezing in between two pieces of furniture in my sixth grade classroom during our hour to read books in order to create a little haven for myself where I would not be disturbed. That's where I followed the adventures of Basil.

The rat is an appropriate Halloween motif (and one that is significant to me, living in NYC), and I wanted to think about what he might dress up as for his own celebration.  Naturally, he became what you see below.  His wide stance and flowing cloak is an ode to those mice and rats of my youth.

"Vampire Rat" Pencil and digital color.  Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

A Prickly Halloween

I'm designing a new line of Halloween illustrations that will be made into cards.  I'd almost prefer to send a Halloween card than a Christmas card; it's my favorite day of the year.  For one day, you can be anything or see anything.  On that day, I really believe in ghosts (though I really do) and goblins and witches and werewolves.  My most memorable childhood costume was the year I was a wizard, complete with false beard and nose and wrinkles, courtesy of my sister, who had learned the basics of theater makeup.  I will never do that again; I almost ripped off my skin at the end of the night trying to remove the skin.  Moreover, my nose wiggled in the weirdest way when I ate and my friends in school were a little creeped out by that in the cafeteria.  In recent years (and probably because I'm an art historian), I've tended to the historical, turning saints into costumes. Two of the more successful were St. Lucy with her bloodied eyes on a plate and St. Joan of Arc, complete with dancing flames crawling up my legs.

I love the smell of October air, that crisp, apply, candy-scented air that makes you wrap up with a scarf while enjoying the last rays of the sun's warmth.  I love the smell of a whole bag of Halloween candy.  Each year, it smells exactly the same.  I love the whole atmosphere of Halloween night.  After all of these years, it still feels magical to me.  Every Halloween, I still read Jack Prelutsky's "It's Halloween!" to myself (my mom read it to us when we were young). I look forward to the day I will read it to my children.  There was something very comforting about going to sleep on Halloween night listening to the final words of that book:

It's late and we are sleepy,
The air is cold and still.
Our jack-o-lantern grins at us
Upon the window sill.
We're stuffed with cake and candy
And we've had a lot of fun,
But now it's time to go to bed
And dream of all we've done.
We'll dream of ghosts and goblins
And of witches that we've seen,
And we'll dream of trick-or-treating
On this happy Halloween.

I've decided to do a line of macabre images (coming soon), but in line with my shop, I had to add one sweet card.  This is the first in a line of hedgehog holiday-themed illustrations. 

"Happy Halloween, Hedgehog!"  Pencil and digital color.  Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

For Everett

My family has never been short on imagination.  I was lucky to grow up before the rise of the video game, the iPod, the iPad, the smartphone, and the internet.  My mom filled our rooms with shelves of books and art supplies and games that made us think.  When we were bored, she'd tell us to read a book, but just as often as not, we would be outside playing some made-up game that was desperately fun.  To this day, walking in to a children's book store, especially magical ones like Books of Wonder in NYC, makes me feel nostalgic and sad and yet very happy, all at the same time.  My youngest brother had, and still has, an especially developed imagination, and he would spend hours fighting dragons and roaring like Godzilla as he pretended to battle Mothra or Gidorah or some other nasty Japanese monster.  My oldest brother once made a drawing of Josh as he pretended to be Godzilla. Now that my oldest brother has a son of his own, I thought I'd reimagine that scene.

My baby nephew is awesome. He's perfecting animal noises and will soon be at that age when he'll enter the world of dragons, dinosaurs and giant mutant lizards from the sea.   For a birthday present for my brother, I've drawn his son, now about twenty months old, dressed up for trick-or-treating.  He's wearing his trusty dragon costume, designed to impart courage and to elicit monstrous roars.  Hearing a step behind him, he starts to turn.  What's that behind him?   I was  influenced in equal measure by Chris van Allsburg, Bill Watterson, and Maurice Sendak...three of the 20th century masters of drawing and storytelling.  It's an homage to children with imagination and to that perfect age when a backyard can become a place of wonderful adventure.

"Boy vs. Dinosaur" Pencil Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Detail, "Boy vs. Dinosaur"