Hello, I'm Bonny Snowdon, ex-corporate person and mother turned successful artist entrepreneur. It wasn't that long ago though that I lacked the confidence, vision, and support network to focus on growing my dream business. Fast forward past many life curve balls, waves of self-doubt, and so many lessons learned. And you'll see Ignite my thriving online coloured pencil artist community, a community that changes members' lives for the better, and gives me freedom to live abundantly whilst doing what I love and spending quality time with my beloved family and dogs, all whilst creating my best artwork with coloured pencils and mentoring others to do the same.
But this life wasn't always how it was for me. It used to only exist in my imagination. I've created the, It's A Bonny Old Life podcast to help increase people's confidence, share mine and my community's experience, and hope through fascinating personal stories, champion the other amazing humans in my personal, professional, and membership community, and create another channel through which I can support others to realize their dreams. If you're a passionate coloured pencil artist, or an aspiring one, who's looking to create their best work and a joyful life you love, you are in the right place. Grab a cuppa and a custard cream. Let's get cracking.
I say this every month, but I, I can't believe another month has gone. June has been a little bit quieter for us, which has been lovely as I've been able to do some planning, particularly around my in-person events. Watch this space on that. And if I'm being honest, I'm overly excited about it and probably need to have a lie down.
Lots of gorgeous commissions have been finished this month and I'm now starting my next big tutorial, and it is a biggie. Background human being and flowers. I had a bit of a moment last night when I'd drawn the hair and it all turned out well. I got, I got a bit emotional as it's, you know, it's so flipping lovely, being able to sit down and just draw stuff and it turn out how you want it to. Anyway, sit back. It's not an overly long roundup as I had to sneak the video in early morning outside as per usual, I was very last minute.com.
Ah gosh, June nearly over. Can't believe it. I'm sitting in the garden today and doing a quick roundup. I was supposed to do this last week and, and well, I went to London and I just didn't,
I just didn't have the energy to create a video, so, so I didn't, so I'm trying to sneak this video in this morning so that it's all ready, and it looks like I've been very productive and done it, but I'm just sneaking it in really quickly. So, yeah, so I'm in, in my garden and it's looking, I dunno whether you can see it's looking so,
so, so pretty. You can see that I've got the, the, I dunno whether you can see that as well in the cat. The cat in the cat in the catio. And it's a bit windy, so I'm probably gonna end up having to rerecord this anyway because it's all gonna have wind noise in it and all of that kind of stuff.
Probably should check it, actually shouldn't I before I go too far. Anyway, June has been a, a busy month again, well, actually a little bit quieter than normal. I've, I've managed to fit in a lot of commissions and everything in, and we have, we've got another scholarship that we're giving away for IDAs, which I'm really, really happy about.
So we are packing the boxes there. We've got all of the stuff ready from the lovely Emma at the color pencil shop, and what else have we done? Lucy was away on holiday, so that was sort of quite quiet. Just the normal, just the normal stuff really. A couple of things that, that we've sort of almost finalized. I know you'll have seen to join a waitlist for an in-person event.
I'll be revealing that very soon. We're, we're just doing one, one in the UK to begin with and then see how it, see how it goes, see what people think about it. But I'm quite excited about that. I booked my tickets for Nashville. I'm very excited about that. I'm going to Nashville in October. Actually, not, not for art reasons,
although I am going to meet up with lots of my members, hopefully. And it's more a case of I'm going on like a business trip thing. Yeah, so it's, it's actually, it has been a pretty, a pretty quiet, a pretty quiet month. I've just started a new tutorial, started it last night, spent ages drawing the line art out.
I I have a real hatred of drawing line arts. I hate drawing line arts. I hate drawing line arts. I, I, I would not draw all line arts if I didn't, if I didn't have to for the tutorials. I just, I just, I just don't like them anyway. I just get bored. So I drew, this is quite a big piece.
It's sort like a 12 by almost 12 by 12 piece, full background, all of that kind of stuff, and quite finicky. It's quite fiddly. So drew that out last night. So, and started to draw, but then it got, just got too hot and I, and I had all the dogs in there with me and it was just,
ugh. And I couldn't put the fan on because of the recording. So I've stopped, and hopefully today it'll be a little bit cooler. You can probably hear my washing machine now. We, it's, it's all go in the Snowdon household. Oh, and the, and the flies up, God. So London was fabulous. I went to, I went to spend a few days with Vicki in London,
which was amazing and naughty. Vicki ended up surprising me with some of my amazing members. I knew I was meeting some guys on, on the, on the Friday, but I ended up meeting the lovely Carys and Deirdre on the Thursday as well, which was the most wonderful surprise. It was just fabulous. And I got to see Carys' beautiful artwork.
She bought her artwork with her, and I cried. It's the most incredible work, honestly. It makes me so sad when people don't see how incredible they are. She's a, she's a wonderful artist, absolutely wonderful artist. It's been quite nice as well, actually to, to have a little bit of time to reflect on stuff that I want to do.
So I've been doing an awful lot of that this this month. A lot of writing. Got myself a new teleprompter, which has been, I'm not using it now. Can you guess? The teleprompter has been an absolute lifesaver. It honestly has. I, I, I have to create quite a lot of face to camera videos with, with important mess,
important messages. Messages where I have to say specific things. I find it really difficult to remember something like this I can ramble on and there's full of ums and r's and all of that kind of stuff, but, oh, here come the dogs. Oh, sorry, I've now got silly dogs. Is it dog daughter? It, I know,
I know. They're all very excited. So yeah, it's, I, I've been able to sort of reflect a little bit on some of the things that I want to do, and I think it's quite good to have a little bit, it's not been downtime at all. We've still been crazy busy, but I think it's quite good to have a little bit of time to be able to,
to just sort of breathe a little bit and, and think about stuff that you want to do. Yeah, it's been a, it's been a really nice month actually. I've just finished a big, a big portrait, big double portrait, the two horses. That was a little bit tricky because there were sort of few changes that, that the, the client,
oh, honestly, the client wanted to make, oh, a few cha a few changes that the client wanted to make. And so I had to completely make up, well, two horses necks. I had to completely make up these two necks main and sort of like the body and the shoulder and everything. So, and actually it's turned out really,
really nicely, but it's, it's quite tricky. You know, you, you spend hours and hours and hours trawling stop it. Don't worry. Trawling through photographs to find, try and find something that is, you know, anywhere similar to what you're drawing. And in the end, I was just like, I, I could spend hours trolling through photos and I'm just not going to,
I'm just not going to carry on. So hair everywhere now. So I just sort of made it up. And I think once you've, once you've drawn hundreds of horses, you kind of know what, what they look like. And I'm, I, I've had horses all my life, so you do sort of understand the structure and everything, so,
but they've turned out quite nicely and they were a big piece as well. So, and I've done a few free pieces as well for people this month. I'm, I, I do, I do like to do free stuff occasionally because it's, it's quite, it's quite nice, you know, for a couple of friends. So they've just lost their dog and everything and it's just,
you know, I think, I think it's important. I think it's really important to know your worth and I think it's really important to value your work. But I also think it's important, you know, to do things for free if you want to do them for free. I never discount my work. I'll never, I'll never sort of say, oh,
25% off or 50% off or anything like that. But I will give some stuff away for free and that, I'm happy with that. Oh gosh, we've got the helicopter now. So, yeah, so it's been quite a month. Some exciting things in the pipeline. Excited about Nashville in October and Gardens Looking great cats in the catio. The dogs now you can see there's Vinnie,
Vinnie down there and there's Nelly there. And the, oh, it's like a bike plane up there. It's all, it's all go, all go on a Monday morning.
I really hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of my, It's A Bonny Old Life podcast. If you did, I'd be so grateful to you for emailing me or texting a link to the show or sharing it on social media with those you know, who might like it too. My mission with this podcast is all about sharing mine and my community's experience and hope by telling your fascinating personal stories, championing the other amazing humans in my personal, professional, and membership community. And to create another channel through which I can support you to realize your coloured pencil and life dreams. If you haven't done so yet, please help me on my mission to spread positivity and joy throughout the Coloured pencil world by following me on my socials at Bonny Snowdon Academy or by getting on my list at bonnysnowdonacademy.com. And remember, I truly believe if I can live the life of my dreams doing what I love, then you can too. We just need to keep championing and supporting each other along the way in order to make it happen.
Till next time,
