Michelle Kogan’s Art is Featured this Week on Harold Underdown’s FB cover photo

This week I am happy to have my art  featured as the cover photo on Harold Underdown’s FB page. Harold is a children’s book editor and the author of  The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books. It’s a great book, and I refer back to it often. He also has the website The Purple Crayon which is chock full of info on writing, illustrating and publishing Children’s Books. Take a trip over to my website to view the entire painting: http://www.michellekogan.com 

Here’s a little info on the painting:
I worked on this painting while teaching a summer plein air painting class in the Lurie Garden’s of Millennium Park, in Chicago. My plein air paintings are often very spontaneous, where I am trying to capture a story and moment in time. Sometimes I begin with a quick thumbnail sketch, but often I start drawing directly on  watercolor paper with watercolor pencils and no preparatory sketch. I often use the watercolor pencils as brushes, dipping them into water and then drawing  with them. This gives me a very fluid line. I continue the painting with brushes and watercolors, bringing in the watercolor pencils for highlights and more line. I use transparent and occasionally a few opaque watercolors from tubes. Sometimes I bring in highlights with bits of white. The rabbit was there for a flash and then gone. I am very captured and inspired by color and seek to bring out vibrant colors in my children’s watercolor illustrations and paintings.