Bright studied Fine Art at UC Santa Barbara and Illustration at Cal State Long Beach. Shortly after college, she was hired to illustrate backgrounds and animate characters for educational computer games. That launched a fifteen-year, full-time career in computer games. Bright was the original artist and animator of Knowledge Adventure’s Jumpstart Educational Game Line.
In recent years, as a proud member of the SCBWI, Bright has been fully focused on her career in book illustration and has successfully illustrated more than twenty children's books for self-publishers. This year, Bright's illustration was selected to represent the SCBWI Southern Breeze Spring Mingle Conference, entitled Full Steam Ahead, in 2025.
She makes time to visit elementary schools to read books, followed by lessons in drawing, animation, mural painting and book making. Click here to arrange a school visit.
In her spare time, she tends to an organic vegetable and berry garden, paddles, runs, lifts, hikes and plays volleyball.
“Life experience and a passion to live a life that matters make me a reliable, hard-working, artist. Please reach out if you would like to work together.”
Interesting Facts:
The first book Bright illustrated, "I Love You All the Time", sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide.
"The Tangle Tower", written and illustrated by Bonnie Bright, was listed as a top 20 children's book on Amazon/Kindle for many months.
I was the original artist of JumpStart educational games by Knowledge Adventure.
Proud member of the SCBWI, Southern Breeze.
Volleyball, A Way of Life: Bonnie Bright is the daughter of two volleyball Olympians. Her volleyball career highlights include winning the California Division 1 High School State Championships and playing Division 1, PAC 10 as a starting outside hitter- for UC Santa Barbara in 1984. She broke the service ace and digging records her first season and dreamt about following in her parent’s footsteps one day. Unfortunately a car accident at the start of her third season brought those dreams to a crushing halt (rotated vertebrae). But her love of the game never died, and she fought hard to become #2 on the California Beach Volleyball Association ranks in 1999. Bright was also named All-American while playing indoor with her amazing Roof Sportswear team at age 45.