Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten

We moved to Northern Germany five days after my tenth birthday. Though we were originally slated to move to Bavaria, the famously beautiful part of the country, it was changed to Bremerhaven, a seaport on the North Sea.  My father went in advance of us and secured housing. I remember that video that he sent back for us of the house. We were nervous to move to a new country. I was in fifth grade and it was the first time any of us had lived abroad.  We didn't know any German and we would not be coming back to the States for three years...an interminable amount of time for me and literally more than a lifetime to my little brother Josh, who was still a toddler.

Bremerhaven had a military base, but the city itself was interesting to my eyes.  We lived a short walk or bike ride away from a beautiful, sprawling wooded park called Speckenbüttel. The downtown, also a short walk away, was cobblestoned and charming.  There were pastries and spaghetti ice to be had. At the port itself I watched boats sailing by and pretended they were pirate ships. I imagined I could see the coast of America and that I could see my friends waving at me from three thousand miles away.  I remember eating my first chocolate crepe there. My dad always got chocolate and banana, a combo I found odd at the time.

Really the best part of the year was Christmastime.  We lived about a half an hour away from Bremen. Actually, Bremerhaven was part of the Bremen state within Germany (West Germany at the time).  During Advent the town put on an amazing Weihnachtsmarkt, a Christmas market.  Vendors from all over I don't even know where came to sell ornaments and toys and the cutest stuffed bears and the most delicious foods.  One of my first really strong food memories was of these amazing mushrooms in this creamy sauce that one vendor sold here. We ate them alongside bratwurst stuck through brötchen and pommes frites.

My family at the Bronze pigs, Bremen.

Bremen boasted three other wonders. The first was a child's paradise, a street called Zur Böttcherstraße, which had this amazing toy shop that sold the best glass marbles and steelies and even a hand crank music box that played Für Elise, a song I loved as my friend Mandy's mother used to play it on the piano while I was at their home.  The second was this beautiful statue of the medieval hero Roland, which got my mind bent towards romance:

Roland statue, Bremen, Germany.

But the most famous part of Bremen was the statue of the Brothers Grimm folktale, "The Bremen Town Musicians," the story of a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster who all want to be singers. They meet each other on the road and have adventures together.  Can you spot me in the turquoise jacket? Hint: I haven't yet gotten my growth spurt.

The Bremen Town Musicians Statue, Bremen

I've been toying around with sketches for this drawing for years.  I finally re-imagined them as singers and musicians. In my mind, they are singing Mozart's "The Magic Flute."  Do you know the song? Then you can picture the rooster perfectly.  This drawing is an ode to those years of my childhood.

"The Bremen Town Musicians" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Experiment with color--feedback appreciated

I love working with color. Generally, I use colored pencils. But since I layer them until they shine, and since I like to add texture with a hard pencil atop the wax of the pencil, they don't scan well. The light from the scanner will pick up on sheens that are not intended, making the image look rippled. I've tried using illustration board, but there is not enough tooth to hold the amount of the medium I want to add.

Hence my black and white images...

Here I've experimented with digital color on top of a pencil illustration.  What do you think? I fear that too many people do not appreciate a good black and white drawing and always ask when will I color it.

"The Animal Parade--Color" Pencil with Digital Color. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

Feedback appreciated.

Because everybody needs one...

"Giraffe Finds a Friend" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

I'm not sure, really, when and where inspiration strikes.  The other night I was paging through an old sketchbook, looking at seeds of ideas for Halloween images, fairy tales, and more, when I found a written line (not terribly common for me), which read, "Giraffe with a nest on his head."

It could happen, you know, as the giraffe is up so high in the trees as he searches for a snack among the leaves.  As I sketched it out, I realized the giraffe was happy to have that nest there, because it was the home of this little bird.  You see, they are fast friends.  Drawing this picture made me as happy as the giraffe seems to be.

Considering that my hair sometimes resembles a nest, and that once a bird actually tried to get some of the hair from my head for a nest, I empathize with the giraffe a bit, too.

The Animal Parade, Part 1

When I was a kid, my Aunt Judi used to sing us this song called "Animal Fair."  It was very evocative, conjuring images of animals playing and grooming under the moonlight.  One line, "the old raccoon by the light of the moon was brushing her auburn hair," always caught my fancy.  I've read other versions where it's a baboon instead, but their rainbow colors aren't as magical in the moonlight.  The raccoon is a night animal; he's a masked menace.  He burgled his way into my trash time and time again in North Carolina, but I still find them intriguing, as if they have another personality hidden under that mask that's mild-mannered, more Clark Kent than Cat Burglar. 

I wanted to pair two animals that you might catch a glimpse of in the woods.  The bear is something I've only seen once in the wild, and though we were alarmed, he was a bumbling sort, more interested in the grass than in the family bathing on the river dock not far away.  Here the bear and raccoon are a happy pair, and they ride in the parade in style, bedecked with bells as they announce their arrival...so as not to startle anyone. :)  This is the first in a series.

"Bear and Raccoon", part of the series "The Animal Parade" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

How I work

It's been a while since I've gotten the chance to post, with the store catching on with the public and the semester getting rolling...but that doesn't mean I'm not working!

I realize it's not everyday you get to see an in-progress drawing.  I think I work differently than other artists, as I tend to finish one portion before continuing on to the next part.  If I work in layers, the drawing never gets done, so I layer tiny portions until the drawing is where it needs to be, then I move on.

You can see that it's part outline, part base coat, and part detail work.  Right now I'm working with a 2B and a 4H pencil to get different softnesses and tones.

"Bear and Raccoon--In Progress" (For the series "The Animal Parade") 2011 Jessica Boehman

For Fozzie

My family dog, Fozzie, really should've been named Godzilla. As a puppy, he was a real Jekyll and Hyde, crazy one minute and sweet the next.  When I say crazy, it's because he would go under the couch at nighttime and throwdown with...who knows? The other Fozz? He would bark and growl and then whine. The couch would wobble with his efforts. It was really, really odd.  He's turned into a toothy, noisy berserker butterball, a weird combination to be sure, with a deep abiding love for my family, and especially my brother-in-law.

One day while visiting home I was watching Fozz sit in the family room with his head resting on the stair to the kitchen. All of our dogs, Merlin, Jumper, and Fozzie all sat this way.  For a moment, he looked like a beast, a wild animal, and I thought about how weird it is to have an animal in the house.  Here's Fozzie running in the park not far from our house. He gets so excited he can't really stand it.

"Fozzie Running" Photo by Meghan Boehman

 

 

 

"Sweetheart" Photo by Meghan Boehman

I started to think about what it would be like to have a dragon that acted like Fozzie.  So here he is, with the squishiest squeaky I can imagine. He's a little cross-eyed and his teeth are a little weird, but you can tell he has a big heart and a soft spot for tearing stuffing out of toys.

"My Pet Dragon" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman

At the Zoo

I think it's pretty clear by now that I love the zoo.  I've already mentioned that we live within a short walk of the Central Park Zoo and walk by at least once a week, often stopping in to go face-to-face with a penguin or to hang out with the sea lions.  A couple weeks in Singapore this summer with my husband helped that love grow. There, you can get really close to a lot of the animals, feeding giraffes, rhinos, and even orangutans.  They've got an amazing zoo and bird park, and the night safari is a lot of fun.  This past year my brother and sis-in-law had their first child, and I spent a lot of time telling him about different animals and the sounds they make.   I even made a song up about animals he could see in the backyard called, "What can you see when you're sitting in a tree?"  I started to think about what it would be like to bring your own baby to the zoo, at that age when they are excited and curious and the whole world is new. I wanted a mom and baby to be walking through a whole mass of animals; what we see are the animals they've seen for the very first time.  I picture this drawing hanging in a kid's room, where mothers can teach their kids about animals: Can you find the baby kangaroo? Where is the mother giraffe?

"At the Zoo" Pencil. Copyright 2011 Jessica Boehman