The Salmon of Doubt

 If you, like me, miss the great Douglas Adams

(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and more),

its worth reading The Salmon of Doubt a collection

of works found on Adam's computer hard drives.

Just reading a few passages improves my writing ten-fold.

Fairies Cookbook

When I get stuck on design, these are my go-to happy books.

For a quick spark, Barbara Beery's Fairies Cookbook.

There are a few good-for-you beauties like these fruity magic wands...

...and fairy queen quiches.

Fairy garden cottage cupcakes, what a fun idea!

And these frosty fairy mints go perfectly with...


Fancy pink fairy cocoa.

Children's Drawing Books

Goodwill is turning out to be an incredible source of art books.

My latest score: children's drawing books that pack a punch.

Usborne's Calligraphy: From Beginning to Expert is an excellent introductory

guide with clear instructions, a range of styles, and varied applications.

Its brief, but kick-started me to jump into hand-lettering.

Another favorite is Usborne's

How to Draw Ghosts, Vampires, and Haunter Houses.

Its tiny, but packed with ideas that are easy to execute.

After this page, I had to draw a church and graveyard,

its hard to resist this book's zany projects.

And Usborne's How to Draw Maps and Charts?

Every child (and maybe many adults) can learn something

from this book.  From traditional maps and charts to creative play.

The End of Harry Potter

I'm finally finishing the Harry Potter series, a few years

behind the rest of the world, and wow, what a treat.

Fabulous from start to finish, Rowling rocks!

Cornbread Cafe

 We headed down to Eugene to enjoy one of our favorite new finds:

Cornbread Cafe.

 Delicious comfy vegan food, this is the breakfast Country plate:

Chicken-fried tempeh, split biscuit, seitan sausage gravy, & home fries

Behind the Caffe Picori coffee with coconut creamer is the Chik n' Waffle:

a Belgian waffle, breaded & deep-fried seitan, cashew gravy, and

even maple/agave syrup.

The perfect amount of energy to go Goodwill book hunting :).

Rip the Page!

 Here's a book guaranteed to boost creative writing:

Rip the Page by Karen Benke.

From the first activity on, this is a winner:

inspirational, challenging, and a lot of fun too.

What do I write with?  Candy and other little joys!

Books Beat the Blahs

Last night I started feeling worn down and by this morning it was

a challenge getting out of bed, possibly residual from being sick for

months or the lull my brain gets sometimes.

It was time to hustle!

First, coffee and salt/water to get my blood pressure back up,

then a lot of moving around at work to try to energize.

Later, we loaded up on groceries and feasted on baked potatoes

followed by another trip to get...

More 49 cent Goodwill books! (yep, only three days since our last trip).

We hit three stores in rapid succession with the best pick-me-up...

Just try to not feel great with a bunny picture book and bag of Cheetos.

Fuel for the Fire

 We're making full use of this long weekend, today we fueled up

with a short trip to snag a dozen doughnuts and...

 Books!  That's about 16 bucks worth from Goodwill.

The super-score was the Roget/Bartlett combo thesaurus

and quotation book along with a complementary

(and color-coordinated) Heritage collegiate dictionary.

We scurried back home with our loot to continue the best kind of

holiday weekend: comfortably nestled at home.

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!