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!
