NEW BOOK! Moving Words About a Flower

Excited to share that MOVING WORDS ABOUT A FLOWER (my 6th illustrated book!) is NOW available in shops and retailers.

Review from School Library Journal

Growing in the crack of a sidewalk, a little dandelion sets seeds sailing to a new meadow home. Following the seeds’ journey from the concrete jungle to a lush summer field, readers will learn all about the little plant’s life cycle and versatile habits. The clever integration of text, color, and imagery has the words dancing across the pages in the style of shape or concrete poetry. When a rainbow appears, the multi-hued words arc across the scene. As the dandelion seeds lie dormant through the winter, stolid lines of chunky text evoke the oppressive weight of heavily falling snow. Deer nibbling the tasty flower petals leave the letters looking decidedly worse for wear. Readers will enjoy following the frolicking text, excited to see where it goes at the next turn of the page, culminating in the familiar pleasure of blowing on a dandelion puff. The city scenes depict a diverse and vibrant urban community, creating a pleasurable contrast to the green, animal-filled meadow. Back matter includes additional information about a dandelion’s life cycle, enhancing the book’s potential for integration into lessons of plants, life cycles, and seasons.

VERDICT Perfect for spring, this lively celebration of the humble dandelion adds flair to all collections.

100 days of art making...

Ive been hard at work - trying to keep up - with #the100DayProject. I hope i can make it to 100. Only 91 more days to go! Ive been expiring collages. My idea was to do 1 8"x8" collage (digital or analog) per day. And while I started putting pressure on myself to make amazing pieces, now I am just trying to have some fun.

Read about the project (started by Elle Luna) here + take a peek @ all my artworks to date on my Instagram page here.

thankU_BarbChotiner.jpg

LOVE IT!

My (now) 4 year old daughter loves to shout "LOVE IT" whenever she's excited about something. Well, I'm excited about a few things and made this little diddy to share. I feel like my art is going in exciting directions and its just one of those days when i love my job.

I also added a new mounted on wood prints to my buyStuff shop. Ive been making a bunch of these wood panels for the flower show but wanted to add them to my 'lil shop as well.

river. sea. ocean.

Just you and me. River. Sea. Ocean.

I just finished working on this large piece of art which was composed together from numerous monoprints. Wouldn't it be lovely to purchase from West Elm or Serena and Lily or One Kings Lane or Ballard? I also personally love GreenBox. A gal can dream, right? Where is your favorite place to get wall art? I'm also thinking now I need to do 2 smaller complementary pieces using the lighter aqua teal blues...

Deep Seal Diving Whales. Artwork available for licensing. © Barb Chotiner 2014

And here is a smaller nautical print I was working on. (But part of the same series.) I thought it might be nice to see them side by side in reverse...

River, Sea, Ocean. Artwork available for licensing. © Barb Chotiner 2014

The above pieces were inspired by one of my favorite songs by the artist Badly Drawn Boy...

Us, you and me
River sea ocean
Moving on so far away and dreaming
Quality sea, makes it to the ocean
Far away far away
Let her go, go far away

- Badly Drawn Boy

wall decor

Here are my two pieces I created (last week) for the Lilla Rogers art course I have been taking. Once again I started with a few hours of monoprinting cut shapes and then added line drawings and a few random scanned objects. The assignment was to create "wall" decor for a canvas. There needed to be collage elements, a flower, a bit of text and my assigned colors were orange and blue. (yay - to Syracuse (my alma matter) and to the Mets (my original home team!) The target demographic happened to fall within my age range - so that was a help. I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out. I think i've found a new way of working! I think i may even get the first one printed on canvas and hang it in my daughters room. (She wants the top one. She even carried a printout of it around the house this weekend.

Making Art that Sells - via Lilla Rogers - Wall Art Submission

Making Art that Sells - via Lilla Rogers - Wall Art Submission

Making Art that Sells - via Lilla Rogers - Wall Art Second Design

Making Art that Sells - via Lilla Rogers - Wall Art Second Design