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.
August has been one busy month. Again, it's seen the launch of my newest venture, the great British Art Party, which I'm incredibly excited about, was sold out overnight, which was amazing. Some lovely commissions and just the usual, just the usual stuff really. So grab a cup of tea or a glass of wine and sit back and enjoy.
Oh gosh, it's nearly Christmas. That's what we've been, honestly. We've just been sitting and saying, I honestly can't believe it's the middle of August and it's not the middle of August now it's the end of August. And it's crazy how quickly this year has gone. And I say that every single time I do one of these roundups, but I,
because I really mean it, this month has been super busy again. We have had a few amazing things actually this month. So I can now reveal the, what I was kind of alluding to last time, which is my new venture into live events, in-person events rather than, you know, the, the events that are online. And I'm gonna be running my first in-person event for the first time since the beginning of 2020 in the UK in November.
And the ticket sold out in less than 12 hours. And it's quite a big event as well, which is incredibly exciting. So, and it's my Great British Art Party, which is as grand as it sounds, quite frankly, it's gonna be amazing. It's all about getting people together, drawing, having an amazing time, having bubbly and gorgeous sumptuous afternoon tea in a beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful hotel and, and just spending some time with each other and with me and just having the most amazing time. So I'm incredibly excited about that. We've had a big planning session, Lucy and I, looking at 2024, what we're gonna be doing then, more art parties in the UK and very excitingly the start of the art parties overseas.
So we're looking at going to the states at the back end of 2024, which is, I'm really excited about that. I know that loads and loads of people have been asking me to come over. I was supposed to do a tour of the US in 2020, and of course we had to cancel. So I'm really, really excited about that. What else have we got?
We've got a workshop sold out workshop that I've got running on this Sunday, which I need to prepare for. Of course, I'll be doing that about eight o'clock in the morning. No, I won't. I'll be prepared before, but we're gonna be drawing a polar bear again. Really excited about that. We are well on the way with our latest Art Club piece,
which is a lovely bee from a photographer called Georgie Green. And that's proving really lovely, actually. We've done a couple of really, really nice art club pieces where it's been, I'm saying relatively relaxing. I probably have my students popping up going, it's not relaxing at all, Bonny. It's, it's scary as anything. But we are drawing a background,
so I'm drawing a background in, which is a really relaxing thing to do because it's more about getting the pencil down, blending it, all of that kind of thing. So, so that's, that's going really, really well. I've got my next big tutorial that I will be starting, I think in the next couple of weeks. I've got a,
a commission that I'm working on at the moment. And then I'm gonna be starting looking at the next big tutorial, which is a beautiful horse. Again, very excited about that. I've also got my cat, I've got the photos and everything ready for my cat, Miriam, which we're going to be drawing too, not at the same time, cat on a horse's back.
No, we're gonna be doing that as a separate tutorial. We have got, I've got some live events coming up. This is going out on Thursday, so it will have been, I'll have done a live event last night, Wednesday, and I've got some live draws coming up as well. So I've got a live draw on the 3rd of September and a live draw on the 10th of September.
So if you haven't already signed up, do, we think, I can't remember what we're drawing first. Paws, I think first, and then a tiger's eye. So all, you know, the, the live draws, honestly, it's one of my most favourite things to do. Loads of people all over the world all drawing together. We're all having a fabulous time drawing and I've chosen smaller subjects this time,
so we've got a couple of hours to really get into the subject rather than sort of, you know, the speed draws. I'll keep the speed draws for another time. And then of course we've got the, the Ignite membership opening again on the 11th of September. And we've got some sort of little changes that we've made, and it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be amazing.
I've got some super projects coming up for the art clubs. We're drawing the bee at the moment. I've got a gorgeous Highland cow that we're gonna be starting hopefully in October. I've done, I've actually added some more live draws for anybody who is joining the Ignite membership. I'm gonna be working on a few smaller pieces in addition to what we're doing as well,
just just to get people in and drawing and used to, you know, how we do things. So, yeah, so it's in, it's very, very, it's very exciting. I've got fabulous, Vicki, part of my team. She's up for three days to help me on a big project that we're working on for October, November time, so,
which is super secret at the minute. But yeah, she's come up to kind of help me get everything planned and put together and then I've just gotta get, do the work and, and create it. And then I've also been working, I found this amazing free software, well, it's free, there's a free version you can pay for it, but an amazing free software called miro.com,
M a m i R o.com, and it's like a whiteboard. So I've been planning out my, my new course that I'm creating for next year. I've been planning that out on there, which is, it's a really, really useful piece of software actually. You know, it's on, on the web and everything, but it's really useful because you've just got this big workspace and you can put all sorts of little things in it.
You can have post-it notes and forms and you know, whatever you want to go in there. So kind of all my idea and thinking and all of that kind of stuff is just going down in one place rather than lots of multiple notepads and scribbles and stuff everywhere. So that's proved to be really, really good. And that course, it, it's,
it's something that I've been thinking about for an awfully long time and I, I think it's something that is really needed. So as I kind of get into that and create a little bit more, I've still, I've, I'm kind of still in that sort of thinking space around the name of it and everything. But once I, once I kind of finalize certain bits,
I will share some stuff and I'll also put out a wait list for it as well, because it's gonna be a course that's available probably once a year. Yeah, it's, it's definitely needed. Definitely needed. And, and that's about it really. I, it sounds like I'm really rushing, but actually probably am rushing. 'cause Vicki and I are going for an Indian tonight,
an Indian, there's a lovely restaurant in Boroughbridge where Vicki's staying. So we're, we're, we're going there tonight. So I'm really hungry. Dogs are all fine. Cat's fine. Crazy thing. She's actually starting to get a little, she's getting on really well with the dogs. So she and Dora are very similar size. She's a little bit, she's not as heavy as Dora is,
only like six and a half kilos, but they're, they're quite a similar size, so they've been sort of cuddled up together and they fight each other and yeah, so they've been getting on, getting on really well. And the other thing actually I've really got back into my reading really, really got back into my reading. So I, I found myself on BookTok,
so I really like TikTok and I found myself on BookTok and, you know, you recommended books and I just sort of fell down that whole rabbit hole thing. And I'm, Mr. Amazon must absolutely love me at the moment. 'cause every sort of half an hour I'm like, oh, buy that one. Oh, buy that one. So it's,
it's a, it's a little bit crazy. But yeah, so I've been doing a lot of reading, which is, I used to read an awful lot, you know, just literally lose myself in a book. And, and I haven't properly read, I read a lot of like, self-help books and I kind of half read them and then put them away.
But I haven't properly just completely immersed myself and spent almost like a whole day reading, you know, on a weekend I'll just sit down and I'll start reading and the next minute it's like four o'clock. And it's, you know, it's a wonderful thing to do, getting really, really stuck into and immersed in the book, which I've, I've really,
really enjoyed actually. So I've got all of these different books that this, that I'm reading at the minute. Some of them are, I'm not sure I'd recommend them. Some of them were a bit, oh, wasn't expecting that, but they've all got sort of pretty good storylines and everything. And yeah, I'm really, really enjoying reading again, which is great.
I'm saying reading again, I've always read, but you know, I used to be a big avid reader and, and for some reason just stopped reading novels. So I've done a little bit of experimenting and stuff with my Pastelmat as well, because I've been having a lot of issues with Pastelmat recently. Some of the, I've bought two packs now,
so two packs of, there's five boards, boards in each, that's 10, 10 pieces and they're completely unusable or they're going back, but they're completely unusable and they don't, they don't fit the description that Claire Fontaine gives their Pastelmat, which is supposed to be a unique velvety surface. These are brick, they're like bricks. It's so rough, it's unbelievable.
And they're horrible and I just can't work on them, which is a real shame. So I've been trying to, there's a really helpful lady at Claire Fontaine that I've been speaking to, and she's actually sent me some pieces over, which she's incredibly kind of a, sadly they're not amazingly lovely either, which is real shame. But I wish I could get to the bottom of why there's such a massive difference.
You know, if they say it's a velvety, beautiful, velvety surface, I, you know, I don't understand why the quality can be so different from one piece to another. And I'm not really sure where to go from here. I'm not a big complainer, but, you know, it's expensive and there's a lot of people using it. And there's,
and the, the velvety surfaces, when you get a really good piece, it's the most amazing thing to draw on my latest piece, I'm actually doing it on drafting film and I, I've decided my next person portrait, human portrait is going to be on drafting film because I want to get over the fear factor of trying to draw really smooth subjects on drafting film,
but without having to opt for something like mineral spirits or something like that. 'cause I don't, I just don't like using mineral spirits. And I've been kind of looking at other artists, there's, oh gosh, I can't remember any of their names now, but there's a, an Australian artist and an American artist who do beautiful portrait work on, on drafting film.
And I've been kind of looking at their work and asking questions. One does use mineral spirits and the other one doesn't, and it's more a case of gentle layering and, you know, burnishing and everything. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna try my luck, but I'm working on a piece at the moment, which is, it's a horse, it's a very brightly coloured horse actually,
and that one's very smooth. There's not a huge amount of texture. So yeah, I'm, it's a bit of a challenge. It is a bit of a challenge and I'm trying to get through it and I'm trying to make sure that I go nice and slow and I don't rush it and I don't, you know, kind of overlay or anything like that and really work out,
right. What colours am I needing to put down because you know, obviously you're kind of limited with your layers on drafting film and yeah, it's going okay, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. The reason I'm doing it on drafting film is because it's a second portrait for somebody and their first portrait was on drafting film. The two portraits are going to go together,
so ideally they need to be on the same surface really. So that's kind of pushed me into using drafting film. So we'll see. We'll see how we get on. My first love is Pastelmat, of course. I absolutely adore that surface. You know, if it's that lovely velvety surface, I just love it. It, it's the most fantastic surface to work on.
So I think that's, I think that's it. I don't think I've got anything else. I don't think I've got anything else to tell you. Busy, busy most of the time. Lovely Amy's been away on holiday. She's now back, came back today. We all went out for breakfast, which was nice. And yeah, I think that's it.
I think that's it. So keep an eye out for my live sessions if you haven't signed up. And yeah, keep an eye out for these new tutorials that I'm gonna be doing. The horse is a really lovely one. It's gonna be quite big sort of, it's not full body, but kind of body ish and that's it basically. So I'll see you all very soon.
Thank you for listening to my waffle as per usual. And yeah, hope you have a lovely, next time I speak to you'll be, I don't know, tomorrow when it's the end of September. So I'll see you all soon.
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,
