Friday, November 30, 2012

Welcome to Merry Bright Art!


Welcome to my blog!  My name is Lesley, alias Merry Bright, and I am going to be posting blogs about my passion: pretty and fun art, with a focus on Christmas, food, and cats.  That includes art journals, sketchbooks, watercolor and ink, miniature paintings, art-shows-to-go, illustration art, deco cards of the 1920s and 1930s, and plenty of inspirational holiday images.  I am exploring how the art and little joys of Christmas can extend all year round.

I maintain a blog about my family Bengal Cats, and these beauties pop up frequently in my art.  Visit our daily adventures here.


A bit of background...

I started painting in 2003 for fun.  Like a lot of people starting out, I tried different things with inexpensive materials.  First it was abstract paintings using student grade (barely) acrylics on Masonite board.  My first real painting, with a frame and everything, is still one of my favorites:


After a year or so of these abstracts, I tried my hand at
miniature paintings and put them together in a mini exhibit:


In the mean time, I was inspired by our cats to make "Bengalized"
acrylic paintings.  Once again, my first is one of my favorites.


I really enjoy painting "the boys," they bring so much happiness.


My art style was strong and pretty immovable from the start: bright colors within strong outlines.  To broaden my range, I tried art journaling with new art supplies, starting with two art journals focused around a multimedia cat theme.


I started dreaming of an illustrated cat book, but 2009 was a rough year for me and by Christmas time, I was eager to have a very merry holiday.  This resulted in a series of Christmas cat blogs and I fell for the beauty of the season.

 My journals shifted to a Christmas theme, with two plans:
a children's book featuring our cats and a Christmas art book.


Then I was side-lined by a few years of depression.  I write about that here in three blogs.  The way out in part has been a return to art journaling this past summer, and the goal of producing enough quality art to put together a Christmas book.


Luckily I have a beautiful group of watercolor pans
and brushes I collected before I stopped painting.


The first step was to break out my unused Moleskines and start writing...


...and then it was time to try drawing and painting again.


Next, I built up a collection of reference books on drawing & painting...

 Art journaling...


Favorite artists...


...and Christmas treasuries too.
I will feature some of my favorite books in upcoming blogs.


So now its Christmas season 2012,
time to collect and share inspiration for a year's worth of art...

Thank-you for visiting, please come back soon!


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