Green Ink

Somehow in my life I've managed to start designing tattoos for people. While some are intensely personal, which I would never share, the last few I've done have been a lot of fun.

One of my friends has always had a deep and abiding love for green men.  I remember our first year in grad school together, how she wrote a really fun paper about these guys.  Since we both love Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, a story I'm dying to get my hands on someday as an illustrator, I guess it made sense that we'd do this together.  I'm embarrassed to admit how long ago she asked me to design one for her, and I was having a hard time with it. Then one day she shared a photo and the lightbulb went off for both of us.  It was from a stained glass window (in France?), and the little green man, tucked into a diamond, seemed both joyful and mischievous.   I worked two variations, a long, viney guy and a green man tucked into his original medallion and embellished with leaves.

Long green man tattoo for sienamystic.  Pen and ink. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

I may like the medallion even more:

Green man medallion tattoo for sienamystic. Pen and ink. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

The last tattoo here is one I did for a friend I met while teaching in Ohio. It's the largest tattoo I've ever done, and it translated beautifully into ink.

Ornate cross. Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Silliness for my little brother

I made this marker and ink drawing (it's a tiny thing, maybe 5" high) while I was living in Rome. My friend Emily and I had taken a day trip to Viterbo, where we encountered this 12th-century church with an altarpiece with Jesus.  Jesus was oddly perched on the altar, as if he were sitting in a tree.  I may have cracked a joke about it, but the gears started whirring.

It reminded me of a poem called "The Goblin" by Jack Prelutsky, from his book "It's Halloween!"  Read below, it's delightful and evocative.

"The Goblin"
There's a goblin as green as a goblin can be.
Who is sitting outside and is waiting for me.
When he knocked on my door and said softly,
"Come play!"
I answered, "No thank you, now please, go away!"
But the goblin as green as a goblin can be
Is still sitting outside and is waiting for me.

In this poem, a spectacled, pale green goblin perches on  the tree branch outside of a kid's window at nighttime. It was a picture brought to life by the delightful Marylin Hafner.  Her drawings are the very essence of Halloween to me.  It always gave my brother Chris the creeps, but he loved it, too.

"A Goblin as Green" Marylin Hafner

I had a green marker and a red marker on hand (pitiful, but when you pack for a year out of two suitcases, this is what happens) and I began conceiving of the picture.  I imagine Chris as a child, peering out into a green-sky night.  Instead of the goblin, it's that weird Jesus from the altar, only with green skin.  Of course, our toy Godzilla, complete with ejectable fist, stands on the windowsill.  It's one of my odder pictures, but I love the weirdness of it.

"Green Jesus" Pen and Green Marker. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

An ode to Schongauer

Martin Schongauer's  The Temptation of St. Anthony is a riotous explosion of the imagination.  Schongauer renders his saint in the moment of ecstatic levitation, when devils and demons join him in the air (generally the element of angels) and plague him with physical and mental tortures. The print was a major hit in Renaissance Europe, inspiring Michelangelo and Dürer, among others. Leonardo later wrote that fantastic creatures are born in the artist's mind as a mix of the many animals he had ever seen. Schongauer's demons are believable in much the same way, merging fish, fowl and beast into a fantastic new whole.

Martin Schongauer, The Temptation of St. Anthony.  Copperplate engraving. Germany, 1470s.

The left-most demon with the club has always been one of my favorites. I always saw him with a flute for a nose, though Schongauer does not render him so.  Earlier this summer I re-imagined the demon as a musician.  Demons and the playing of music have been joined since the dawn of the Christian age, so it seems appropriate to me that Schongauer's demon may have played his nose as a flute from time to time, singing his own words in accompaniment. 

"Piping Demon" Pen and ink. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Self

A while back I decided to experiment in pen and marker to make some minimalist self portraits.  My natural tendency is to do lots of shading, and these are essentially reduced to line and color.

One was inspired by some printed paper I had on hand from a gorgeous paper shop in Rome.  I only had a red marker and a pen--not so much to work with--so I wanted to keep it simple. Though I've always been a brunette, in these two pictures I experimented with color, first red, and then black.  The last one does away with hair altogether.

"Self Portrait with Spade" Pen, red marker, and printed paper. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

For this image I juxtaposed two patterns of the paper to produce the desired result.  There's something Baroque or Rococo in feel to this one that I really enjoy.  The paper records part of the opera "Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo.

"Self Portrait, White as Snow" Pencil, red marker, pen. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

This one was a challenge in pattern.  I wanted to do a play on the idea of a sleeping Snow White, with black hair, white skin, and red lips.  The skin of the face is composed of a snowflake.  The background I made into a pattern of apples and vines. I especially like how they mirror under the neck, creating a sort of collared shirt that also becomes the background.   I continued the idea of flat patterning in this next self-portrait.

I've always had pretty much a hate-hate relationship with my large Italian hair. It obeys some of the time, if weather conditions are perfect. Most of the time it feels out of control. I imagine that Medusa felt much the same way.  The snakes in the hair are repeated in the flat pattern motif of the fore- and background.

"Self Portrait with Green Eyes" Ink and green marker. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman