Today I am the featured artist on artsyshark.com, a wonderful site run by Carolyn Edlund, the director of the Arts Business Institute. If you're an artist, you should sign up for email blasts from this site. It has so much helpful information for making a business out of your art.
Please check it out! I am very proud of this today, and I hope you enjoy it!
http://www.artsyshark.com/2012/10/08/featured-artist-jessica-boehman/
Monday, October 8, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
A Great Horse Came Bounding out of the Sea
The third in my "Beasts in Books" series is the hippocampus, the Greek hybrid seahorse, with forequarters of a horse and hindquarters of a fish. The word derives from the Greek "hippos" (horse) and "kampos" (sea monster); its fantastical nature is therefore found in his very name. Pausanius says they are part whale, Philostratus says that they are akin to dolphins, while Homer claims they were golden-hooved.
What would a hippocampus look like? My first inclination was to make him with a fine coat from head to tail, like a seal. I could imagine them rolling and frolicking in the surf. But then again, I was imagining a cold water animal. The waters of the Aegean would not befit such a suit of hair. Would he be slick, like a dolphin? But then, we would lose his horse-like nature. I decided to make him a true mythological hybrid, with a fish's scales and tail, but muscular, so he could propel the chariots of Poseidon. I gave him a ridge of mane all the way down his back, in place of a dorsal fin. I kept his surroundings fantastical, flanking him with the real (octopodes and fishes) and the imaginary (mermaids).
His text draws from the Argonautica, the text from Apollonius Rhodius, a Hellenistic poet who wrote the story of Jason and the Argonauts. In this scene, the hippocampus rises from the surf and gallops away. His appearance is seen as an omen, and the men decide to carry the ship on their shoulders across the desert in the sea horse's wake. The speaker is Peleus, an Argonaut whose later fame came from his demigod hero son, Achilles:
"A great horse came bounding out of the sea, a monstrous animal, with his golden mane waving in the air. He shook himself, tossing off the spray in showers. Then, fast as the wind, he galloped away. Peleus was overjoyed and at once explained the portent to the others. `It is clear to me,’ he said, `that Poseidon’s loving wife has just unyoked his team. As for our mother, I take her to be none but the ship herself. Argo carried us in her womb; we have often heard her groaning in her pain. Now, we will carry her. We will hoist her on our shoulders, and never resting , never tiring, carry her across the sandy waste in the track of the galloping horse. He will not disappear inland. I am sure that his hoofprints will lead us to some bay that overlooks the sea."
What would a hippocampus look like? My first inclination was to make him with a fine coat from head to tail, like a seal. I could imagine them rolling and frolicking in the surf. But then again, I was imagining a cold water animal. The waters of the Aegean would not befit such a suit of hair. Would he be slick, like a dolphin? But then, we would lose his horse-like nature. I decided to make him a true mythological hybrid, with a fish's scales and tail, but muscular, so he could propel the chariots of Poseidon. I gave him a ridge of mane all the way down his back, in place of a dorsal fin. I kept his surroundings fantastical, flanking him with the real (octopodes and fishes) and the imaginary (mermaids).
His text draws from the Argonautica, the text from Apollonius Rhodius, a Hellenistic poet who wrote the story of Jason and the Argonauts. In this scene, the hippocampus rises from the surf and gallops away. His appearance is seen as an omen, and the men decide to carry the ship on their shoulders across the desert in the sea horse's wake. The speaker is Peleus, an Argonaut whose later fame came from his demigod hero son, Achilles:
"A great horse came bounding out of the sea, a monstrous animal, with his golden mane waving in the air. He shook himself, tossing off the spray in showers. Then, fast as the wind, he galloped away. Peleus was overjoyed and at once explained the portent to the others. `It is clear to me,’ he said, `that Poseidon’s loving wife has just unyoked his team. As for our mother, I take her to be none but the ship herself. Argo carried us in her womb; we have often heard her groaning in her pain. Now, we will carry her. We will hoist her on our shoulders, and never resting , never tiring, carry her across the sandy waste in the track of the galloping horse. He will not disappear inland. I am sure that his hoofprints will lead us to some bay that overlooks the sea."
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| "The Hippocampus" pencil. Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman |
Monday, September 24, 2012
Of Virgins and Unicorns
Perhaps the most famous of the mythological beasts, save for the dragon, the unicorn (monoceros) has a long history dating back to antiquity, where he may be found in the writings of Aristotle, Aelian, Philostratus, and Pliny the Elder. In the eyes of the ancients, he was a hybrid animal like the ones that the Greeks and Romans were used to describing in their mythologies, even though this animal plays no real part in the lore of that culture. They describe him in fantastical terms, with the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the tail of a boar, and the feet of an elephant. And, of course, the single horn on its brow that identified him as the unicorn. One other detail remained, one that would persist throughout the rest of the unicorn's history: it could not be captured alive.
In the Middle Ages, the unicorn was a commonplace element in bestiaries that described real and imagined animals alike. In manuscripts, he is shown in a range of colors from brown to white to blue. He sometimes looks like a horse, at other times, a goat. Of course, the most famous image of him is held here in NYC, from the Cloisters Unicorn Tapestries. There, he is shown as a slight white horse tamed by a maiden.
The legend has it that only a virgin could tame the unicorn. This came down to us through the Physiologus bestiary: "He is a small animal, like a kid, but surprisingly fierce for his size, with one very sharp horn on his head, and no hunter is able to catch him by force. Yet there is a trick by which he is taken. Men lead a virgin to the place where he most resorts and leave her there alone. As soon as he sees this virgin he runs and lays his head in her lap. She strokes him and he falls asleep. The hunters then approach and capture him and lead him to the palace of the king."
The identification of the unicorn with Christ, white in his purity, able to only be tamed by the Virgin Mary, seems clear.
But thinking of what the unicorn of my imagination could have been like, I wondered about him and his tamer. Girls in this period were married very young, so in order for the tamer to be a virgin, she must have been just a child. What a horrible thing for a young girl to be used as the means to catch the elusive unicorn. Since many of the medieval images showed the unicorn as a goat, I wonder if he had some qualities of the goat. I made him slight and small, like a pony, and swift of foot, not so much larger than the child who would tame him. His cloven hooves make it easier for him to ascend rocky passages, where mounted hunters could not easily follow. His horn follows the twisting pattern of the narwhal horns (actually a tooth) that were sold as unicorn relics in Europe. In the border that surrounds him, I made a medieval-style unicorn hunt through the forest at night. Though the dogs and hunters close in on him, we know he will escape. There is no virgin to be found here, so our unicorn will win the day.
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| "The Unicorn" Pencil. Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman |
Sunday, September 16, 2012
In this country be many Griffins
About fifteen months ago I was lying in my bed in the middle of the night. I wasn't sleeping well as I was recovering from my third abdominal surgery since I was a teenager. It's impossible to roll over due to the incisions (I sleep on my side) and my back was sore from being in one position. So I spent my time daydreaming, even though it was nighttime.
I imagined drawing a series of mythological beasts that looked realistic, and looked like they had been found within the pages of the books that described them. Did you ever wonder if these creatures were real and we've just forgotten them, or chose not to believe in them? If you consider mythology, it tells the stories of a culture that is defunct, or the stories of a religion in which you do not believe--but people once did believe. Is it possible, with some squinting of the eyes, that we could still see these creatures in the shadows of the forest? Is it possible to believe them back into being?
I can't pinpoint why the Griffin was the first on my list, the one that demanded attention from me. I like his long history, his roots in Egypt and Greece. In Egypt, old renditions associate griffins with the sun and with the lotus flower, so I've imbedded four lotuses within sun disks as a nod to his ancient heritage. I always imagine encountering such beasts nesting high up in dense forests; so I've filled his border with trees growing black feathers. The Egyptians, the Greeks (including Philostratus), the Italian writer Dante, and even the Persians wrote about griffins.
The text in the image below (yes, I've been playing on this concept recently), is from the middle ages. It's from a text of the fictional Sir John Mandeville, simply called The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. It reads:
-->
I imagined drawing a series of mythological beasts that looked realistic, and looked like they had been found within the pages of the books that described them. Did you ever wonder if these creatures were real and we've just forgotten them, or chose not to believe in them? If you consider mythology, it tells the stories of a culture that is defunct, or the stories of a religion in which you do not believe--but people once did believe. Is it possible, with some squinting of the eyes, that we could still see these creatures in the shadows of the forest? Is it possible to believe them back into being?
I can't pinpoint why the Griffin was the first on my list, the one that demanded attention from me. I like his long history, his roots in Egypt and Greece. In Egypt, old renditions associate griffins with the sun and with the lotus flower, so I've imbedded four lotuses within sun disks as a nod to his ancient heritage. I always imagine encountering such beasts nesting high up in dense forests; so I've filled his border with trees growing black feathers. The Egyptians, the Greeks (including Philostratus), the Italian writer Dante, and even the Persians wrote about griffins.
The text in the image below (yes, I've been playing on this concept recently), is from the middle ages. It's from a text of the fictional Sir John Mandeville, simply called The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. It reads:
-->
"In that country be many griffins, more plenty than in any other country. Some men say that they have the body upward as an eagle and beneath as a lion; and truly they say sooth, that they be of that shape. But one griffin hath the body more great and is more strong than eight lions, of such lions as be on this half, and more great and stronger than an hundred eagles such as we have amongst us. For one griffin there will bear, flying to his nest, a great horse, if he may find him at the point, or two oxen yoked together as they go at the plough. For he hath his talons so long and so large and great upon his feet, as though they were horns of great oxen or of bugles or of kine, so that men make cups of them to drink of. And of their ribs and of the pens of their wings, men make bows, full strong, to shoot with arrows and quarrels."
The text claims that Mandeville had traveled through the known world, from England, all the way through Europe to Northern Africa, Persia, and Turkey. He claims to have seen cotton plants that sprouted wooly lambs and goats:
If he believed in such wondrous plants, then the griffins of which he spoke must be real as well. I hope they are, somewhere out there.
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| "In this country be many Griffins" Pencil. Copyright 2012 Jessica M. Boehman |
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Quoth the Raven
..."Nevermore."
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| "Dreaming Dreams (An Ode to Poe)" Pencil and digital color. Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman |
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Fantastic Mr. William Joyce
There are some days when my life seems truly blessed. There are many reasons why I would choose not to live in NYC. However, there are days when I'm really glad to be here, and this past Saturday was one of those days.
I was lucky enough to attend a book signing and talk with the author, illustrator, and filmmaker William Joyce at Books of Wonder in NYC. I've written about this little gem of a store many times; it continues to inspire me. Children's books authors and illustrators are my celebrities! If you haven't yet visited Joyce's website, please do so by clicking here. You'll love it.
Joyce has written and illustrated many books, including the Guardians of Childhood series, comprising "The Man in the Moon," "Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King," and "E. Aster Bunnymand and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth's Core!"
His new picture book, where he teamed with illustrator Joe Bluhm, is called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore." It--and the Oscar-winning animated short of the same title--was the subject of his talk.
Joyce spent the bulk of his time talking about life in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He told an anecdote about how he observed children in the hurricane shelters, crammed with thousands of people who had lost their homes, who were able to lose themselves "in the bubble" of their imaginations when reading books that he had passed out to them. This helped to inspire a portion of his book. It begins when Morris Lessmore, his beloved books, and even the words on the page of the book he writes, blows away in a Wizard of Oz-style storm that upends his home and leaves him in a black and white world. While no Wicked Witches were squashed below, below, below his home, and no yellow brick road appeared to show him the way, his wanderings led him to a young woman being carried aloft by books. Flying books. Flying books in color! He followed one particular book, a flip-book animation of Humpty Dumpty, to an old house filled with these books. Reading the books, getting immersed in a world of imagination, Morris turned to color after his world went black and white. The house he lived in had no computer (like Joyce), no internet, no hand-held games, not even a Kindle. Just books. Books that gave color to his world. And living there, he wrote his own book. He lived among and in the books, took care of them, shared them with others, until he was an old man. I won't give the ending away.
Little did I know that we would also be able to view the movie with Joyce and his colleague, the movie's director Brandon Oldenburg, also of Moonbot Studios, in attendance. It's a first for me: seeing an Oscar-winning film for the first time with the men who made it. How inspiring!
Of course I got a copy of the book signed for my inspiration collection. It's so great to be able to talk to the authors.
I asked if it were nerdy to want to pose with the author. He replied, "Yes, but that's ok!" I own that one. I am a children's literature nerd. Are you, too? Don't be afraid to admit it. Heck, embrace it! It means you have a verdant imagination and a healthy dose of innocence left. Those two things are still in short supply.
Even nerdier, but via proxy: here is my photo with a very accommodating Brandon Oldenburg. It's my geekfest photo for my little sister, an animation student at Rochester Institute of Technology.
The moral of the story (of my day): keep dreaming and think big. They thought and worked all the way to the Oscars, and won. Thanks for a cool afternoon, Mr. Joyce, and a healthy dose of imagination.
I was lucky enough to attend a book signing and talk with the author, illustrator, and filmmaker William Joyce at Books of Wonder in NYC. I've written about this little gem of a store many times; it continues to inspire me. Children's books authors and illustrators are my celebrities! If you haven't yet visited Joyce's website, please do so by clicking here. You'll love it.
Joyce has written and illustrated many books, including the Guardians of Childhood series, comprising "The Man in the Moon," "Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King," and "E. Aster Bunnymand and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth's Core!"
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| William Joyce, spread from "Man in the Moon" |
His new picture book, where he teamed with illustrator Joe Bluhm, is called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore." It--and the Oscar-winning animated short of the same title--was the subject of his talk.
Joyce spent the bulk of his time talking about life in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He told an anecdote about how he observed children in the hurricane shelters, crammed with thousands of people who had lost their homes, who were able to lose themselves "in the bubble" of their imaginations when reading books that he had passed out to them. This helped to inspire a portion of his book. It begins when Morris Lessmore, his beloved books, and even the words on the page of the book he writes, blows away in a Wizard of Oz-style storm that upends his home and leaves him in a black and white world. While no Wicked Witches were squashed below, below, below his home, and no yellow brick road appeared to show him the way, his wanderings led him to a young woman being carried aloft by books. Flying books. Flying books in color! He followed one particular book, a flip-book animation of Humpty Dumpty, to an old house filled with these books. Reading the books, getting immersed in a world of imagination, Morris turned to color after his world went black and white. The house he lived in had no computer (like Joyce), no internet, no hand-held games, not even a Kindle. Just books. Books that gave color to his world. And living there, he wrote his own book. He lived among and in the books, took care of them, shared them with others, until he was an old man. I won't give the ending away.
Little did I know that we would also be able to view the movie with Joyce and his colleague, the movie's director Brandon Oldenburg, also of Moonbot Studios, in attendance. It's a first for me: seeing an Oscar-winning film for the first time with the men who made it. How inspiring!
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| Screening of "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore". See Joyce at left. |
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| He drew the egg with a pen for me, because I told him I am an illustrator. |
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| Me and William Joyce. Amazing. Or, as my nephew would say, "Epicness!" Even cooler that a Trina S. Hyman and a Gennady Spirin book illustration are directly behind us. They are two of my favorites. |
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| Me and Brandon Oldenburg, posing with Joyce's "Dinosaur Bob" |
Friday, August 3, 2012
As Ugly as a Hedgehog
The story of Hans-My-Hedgehog has been the subject of a few posts here: one, which shows the grown half-man half-hedgehog Hans riding astride his rooster as king of the forest, (click here); the other, which is a self-portrait with said rooster and hedgehog (click here). Here is my second installment of Hans-My-Hedgehog, though really, it would be the first following the story's narrative.
As always, the Brothers Grimm version is grim indeed, focusing on the horror of the story. They look to the father instead of the mother. The father wishes for a son to help him in his old age, to be heir to his farm:
'Once upon a time there was a peasant who had money and land enough, but as rich as he was, there was still something missing from his happiness: He had no children with his wife. Often when he went to the city with the other peasants, they would mock him and ask him why he had no children. He finally became angry, and when he returned home, he said, "I will have a child, even if it is a hedgehog." Then his wife had a baby, and the top half was a hedgehog and the bottom half a boy. When she saw the baby, she was horrified and said, "Now see what you have wished upon us!"
The man said, "It cannot be helped. The boy must be baptized, but we cannot ask anyone to be his godfather." The woman said, "And the only name that we can give him is Hans-My-Hedgehog."'
But they miss the point of view of the mother; they did not understand that longing for a child that can run in a woman's blood.
Anthony Minghella's version comes closer to the truth:
'That woman wanted a bairn so bad she wouldn't care what she got. If she had a hedgehog, she'd bring its snout to her breast...No sooner said than done, she got her wish. No time at all, she has her boy, little ball as ugly as sin with a pointed nose and sprouting hair everywhere, a hedgehog baby with quills as soft as feathers."
One of my favorite renditions of this scene is by an illustrator named Ina, whose subtly-rendered drawings are filled with loving detail (click here). Ina shows the nursing mother with her gentle, beastly baby.
What would it be like to finally have that much-desired child, even if it were as ugly as a hedgehog? Would a mother truly scorn that child and make it sleep behind the stove? Or would the mother love that child as the darling of her heart, would she cuddle it and rock it and nurse it in the night? Would she heat milk for it and feed it to him and sing lullabies into his quills? What would you do? This is what I would do.
As always, the Brothers Grimm version is grim indeed, focusing on the horror of the story. They look to the father instead of the mother. The father wishes for a son to help him in his old age, to be heir to his farm:
'Once upon a time there was a peasant who had money and land enough, but as rich as he was, there was still something missing from his happiness: He had no children with his wife. Often when he went to the city with the other peasants, they would mock him and ask him why he had no children. He finally became angry, and when he returned home, he said, "I will have a child, even if it is a hedgehog." Then his wife had a baby, and the top half was a hedgehog and the bottom half a boy. When she saw the baby, she was horrified and said, "Now see what you have wished upon us!"
The man said, "It cannot be helped. The boy must be baptized, but we cannot ask anyone to be his godfather." The woman said, "And the only name that we can give him is Hans-My-Hedgehog."'
But they miss the point of view of the mother; they did not understand that longing for a child that can run in a woman's blood.
Anthony Minghella's version comes closer to the truth:
'That woman wanted a bairn so bad she wouldn't care what she got. If she had a hedgehog, she'd bring its snout to her breast...No sooner said than done, she got her wish. No time at all, she has her boy, little ball as ugly as sin with a pointed nose and sprouting hair everywhere, a hedgehog baby with quills as soft as feathers."
One of my favorite renditions of this scene is by an illustrator named Ina, whose subtly-rendered drawings are filled with loving detail (click here). Ina shows the nursing mother with her gentle, beastly baby.
What would it be like to finally have that much-desired child, even if it were as ugly as a hedgehog? Would a mother truly scorn that child and make it sleep behind the stove? Or would the mother love that child as the darling of her heart, would she cuddle it and rock it and nurse it in the night? Would she heat milk for it and feed it to him and sing lullabies into his quills? What would you do? This is what I would do.
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| "Rocking the Hedgehog Baby" Pencil. copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman |
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