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

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

Sneak Peek--Giraffe Liner

This is a sneak peak of my second liner, inspired by the graceful giraffes that I got to feed while in Singapore with my husband. I'm always amazed by the sheer size of these creatures, and by their gracefulness in bearing in spite of their amazing height.