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.
Well, what a month November has been from using hot press paper for a tutorial to meeting a hundred of my members for a day. I will remember forever sit back, imagine you're having the most amazing afternoon tea, and listen to what I've been up to this month as I tell you all about my first ever Great British Art Party.
Well, hello, the end of an incredibly, incredibly exciting month. This roundup is more about the amazing party that we had in November and, and I just want to share a little bit of the, the run up to it, the vision that I had and then just the, the absolute amazingness that was the Great British Art Party. So November has been,
yeah, a really busy month as per usual, mostly because we were kind of getting ready and geared up to go to Stratford-Upon-Avon to run our first Great British Art Party, which was so, so exciting. I've, I've been busy working on some commissions, which I can't share sadly because they're sort of Christmas and birthday presents, but I will be sharing those pretty soon.
I've done my first human commission first and last. I think I've always vowed that I wouldn't do human commissions purely because I think you've gotta be very, very careful with the photography that you are given. And luckily for this piece, I actually took my own photos, so that was, that was much better. And it's, I think it's turned out really,
really well. I absolutely love it. So if the client doesn't like it, I'm having it. I really enjoyed doing it as well. So I'll be sharing that after Christmas. And then I've got another couple of pieces that are sort of like for birthday type presents. So it's always a bit tricky, I think for artists this time of year is always a little bit tricky working out what you can and you can't share,
you know, 'cause a lot of people are doing like Christmas commissions, gifts and all of that kind of stuff. And it's really, it's can be really hard to sort of keep up with your social media and everything like that. So, you know, they'll all be coming after Christmas. I've, I've finished one of my latest tutorials. This one,
it takes the form of a bit of a different way of things for me. I've been doing tutorials for a long time and I've always kind of been a bit, I don't plan, I don't plan stuff. I see something that I wanna draw and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna draw that. And then I do tutorial around it and it's step by step and that's kind of how it is.
This one here. But I've always a bit chi, you can see it's a bit shiny. This one is a little herd of deer that were taken at Studly Royal by a local photographer, Nick Lancaster. And this, this particular tutorial I've done on like a, it's a Stonehenge paper, so it's like a hot pressy type paper. So it looks,
I dunno, you can see that it's, it's got that sort of hot press sort of feel to it. You can see I've been burnishing like mad, see all that shine there. But it was, it was a really, really nice one to do. And what I've done is I have started to look at how I present my tutorials and how people can watch them.
And usually it's just step by step and you start at the beginning and you end at the end. So I'm still doing that. So if people want to follow along, that's brilliant. And then doing a time lapse. So, and taking, this was 12 hours and I've shortened it to 25 minutes and done a whole new voiceover over the top, pulling out the really important bits that people need to be aware of so they can still work on the tutorial,
but you know, they don't have to watch the whole 12 hours to get the, the, the really good bits out of it. And then what I've done is I've broken it down into chunks and save those as separate videos. So the tree, bit of grass, this is how you draw grass in the distance. This is how you draw, you know,
those trees in the distance. This is how I drew the horns. This is how I drew the grass in the foreground. So I'm kind of starting to break stuff down a little bit so that, you know, if you're drawing something similar, you can go in, you can go, oh gosh, how did Bonnie do the horns on that? And you can go in and you can,
you know, you can work out how to do it. And I think that is a really, really great way for me to start changing my tutorials, changing things up, and also really planning. So I've now got the next six months tutorials planned and planning them around what I want to teach and what's really, really important for people to understand, you know,
so it's not just stuff that I've plucked after midair or, you know, seen something and or I wanna draw that. It's very much about what, what am I seeing in my community that people need help with and how can I bring a tutorial to them to help with the stuff that's going on and, and you know, that I can help with the most.
So that's kind of what I'm, I'm trying to do as well. I'm also trying to use photography. The, it's really difficult 'cause I don't take my own photography and it's quite hard to take my own photography 'cause I, I'm not a good photographer. It's not where my skills lie. So I'm always looking for photographers who I can use because the,
the issue is, or you know, obviously you've got all of those free places like Pixy and pixels and everything like that, and everybody else uses those two. So you'll find that, you know, you'll get artists picking the same image, which is fine, but you know, if you are a, if you're a member of multiple people's, people's patrons and you,
and you're getting the same image, it's a bit annoying. So I'm trying to find images that maybe haven't been used or, you know, photographers who I can actually ask to use their, to use their work. So that's kind of what I've been doing alongside obviously the Great British Art Party, which has been the most exciting thing I think I've ever done.
So way back the beginning of this year, probably into, back into 2022, actually. Can you, oh, can you actually believe that 2023 has nearly entered? I just can't believe it's literally gone whoosh. It's just gone, you know, it's been on fast forward. So I had this vision and I had this vision of me standing on a stage vision of Grandure,
standing on a stage teaching to a a a lot of people, you know, have, having a bit of a laugh, having a bit of fun. And this vision kept on coming back. It kept on cropping up all of the time. And I always think, you know, if you, if you keep on having a thought or a vision that keeps coming back,
there's a reason for it. So I started to kind of think about how this could work. And I have a little, it's not actually a pad, it's on my computer. It's called Ulysses. It's where I've been writing my book, and I have sort of like a little section of all the, the, the ideas that I have. And I have lots and lots of ideas,
and I put all of the ones down, put all of the ideas down, and every now and again, the team and I sit down together and we go, right, I've had these ideas, which do we think have got legs? Which do we think could actually, you know, work? And this was one of the ones that we all were like,
actually this could be, this could be really, really good. And I'm always like, think big, think big, or just, just don't do it. And we started to think about it, we started to think about the name and all of that kind of stuff. And at the beginning it was roadshow because I wanted to kind of take it around the country and,
and possibly overseas. And then eventually it became the Great British Art Party and we were so excited about it and we had a logo created and all of that kind of stuff. And it was just awesome. Again, with the logo, I'm not very creative when it comes to sort of thinking of things like logos, but I was thinking teapot pencils, and I'll just show you this is,
this is one of the, this is one of the little things that we gave out at the, the freebies. It's, it is a lovely bag, but there's the, it's probably back to front, but yeah, it's a little like a, it's not a big pair of pants, it's a bag. I'm looking at it now thinking, oh,
they look like a big pair of pants with a handle, but a really, really nice bag and it's got capacity as well, you know, so it's not just sort of, it's got like the capacity at the bottom. It's not just a, you know, regular tote bag. So we decided that we were gonna do this and we decided that,
you know, where it was gonna be, all of that kind of stuff. And it just very quickly started to come to life. We were thinking about what, what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it, what kind of hotel we were gonna have. And we opted for the welcombe hotel in Stratford-Upon-Avon, really nice big spa and golf hotel.
A beautiful hotel. And we went and had a trip up there and sort of, you know, saw the room and everything and we were like, yeah, this looks really good. And then off on, off we went and we just, we were thinking about, you know, what we were gonna do. So I wanted obviously to do a live draw.
I wanted people to eat something really delicious and I wanted to chat to people and I wanted to sit with people and do, you know, one-to-one and, and, and answer people's questions. So that was kind of the basis of the whole day. We start off with a live draw. We then have afternoon tea and we'd then have AQ and a session.
And then in between times in the afternoon, tea, I'd kind of, you know, table hop and go and chat to everybody. We wanted to give things out and obviously we had to be business head on. Now we had to be very careful about, you know, how everything was costing, how much everything was costing, because this was never,
again, when you're running a business, you know, you do have to think about how, how much something's gonna cost you. And, and, and I hate saying that because you know, it shouldn't really come into it, but it, but it, but it should come into it and it does come into it. But this was never about making money.
This event was never ever about making money. This was a vision that I had and I wanted to do because I wanted to meet up with my community and have a fantastic time. So actually we haven't worked out all of the figures and everything yet, but the likelihood is we haven't actually made any profit on this last event at all, which doesn't matter in the slightest because the joy that it's given me,
the fact that I met so many of my members was just absolutely amazing. And I wanted to, I wanted to have a really great time with my community, and that's exactly what we had. So we were thinking about, you know, what can we put as, as like, you know, goodie bag, all of that kind of thing. Obviously I had to give the materials for,
for our draw along so that we had to think about, had to think about a picture where we didn't have to use a huge amount of colours. Can you imagine buying 600 pencils for a hundred people? It would've been, it would've been, well we wouldn't have been able to do it. So I had to use sort of like minimal pencils. I wanted to give them some really nice gifts that meant something.
So, you know, we started to put that little gift box together, which was so exciting. I've never done anything like this before. It was just really, really exciting to kind of put all of this together and, and kind of, kind of preempting and knowing that people would be opening their boxes and going, oh my goodness, look at those.
Oh good. You know, and just getting really, really excited about it. So we had, I'll just show you a couple of things that we had in here. So we had little, you can see that it's an embossed notepad, which has got, it says Happiness is new pencils, cups of tea, custard creams, good company, four-legged friends,
afternoon tea, and a Bonny old Great British Art Party, which is just, it is wonderful, isn't it? I it's absolutely gorgeous. It's one of those lovely feely books. It's really, it's really, really nice. I love it. I absolutely love it. And of course I love Orange as well. And then we had this, which I was,
oh my goodness, I'm so excited by this. So this is what it looks like flat. And then here I have one already made up, it's a little pencil pop with the little logo on the bottom, and everybody got these in a gorgeous little box with all of the other bits and pieces and the, some of the, you know, pen and all of that kind of stuff,
the bag. And it was just so lovely seeing people, you know, opening them up on the day and getting really excited. It was just wonderful. And then, so we all kind of came to a head and we were all like, gosh, this is it. We're all heading down. I'd actually got a fulfillment house to do the box to,
to pack the boxes up. You know what I'm like with packaging, there's no way I was gonna sit at my kitchen table, I'd have got it all wrong and I'd put all of the wrong stuff in there. So we got a fulfillment house to put them all together and then to send the boxes through to the hotel. So we, we got to the hotel on the Thursday,
we were doing the art party on the Friday, and it was just the most brilliant atmosphere. It was so lovely. We, we, the team went out for tea in the evening. We came back and we met up with some people who were staying, some of the members who were staying on the Friday night. And it was just really, really lovely.
And then in the morning I got so excited because we, I heard this sort of beeping and, you know, sort of engine and everything. In the morning I looked outta the window and there's this big van with all of the audio visual equipment in. I didn't, I wanted this to be a really professional event. I didn't want my usual, you know,
oh, it'll be fine, you know, we'll, we'll make do with sort of like one of my rubbish microphones. I wanted it to be really professional. And when I saw all of this audio visual equipment, all of the screens arriving and all of the, you know, the, the sort of the, the sound station and all of that,
I was like, oh my, oh my goodness, this is, this is gonna be like really professional. And it really was. I think we had six screens. We had the big projector screen at the front. We had screens all the way round so that where wherever anybody was sitting, they could see the screen I had was sitting at the front.
I had a camera down sort of, you know, on, on the thing that I was drawing. We had a guy who was doing all of the sound, so making sure that microphones were working, all of that sort of stuff. And it was absolutely amazing. And I had music to walk into, which was really funny because I was like,
how am I gonna walk? Because, you know, how do you walk into a room? I didn't wanna be sitting there. And I was like, I'm gonna have to walk in. I was, my, my feeling was, you know, I'd love to kind of, I don't know, do a back flip or a cartwheel or something, but of course there's no way I could do that.
I've never been a, even when I was a child, I couldn't do a cartwheel. It was some weird little flop thing. I I managed a forward role. But anyway, so when we were practicing in the morning, there were these double doors and I was like, oh my goodness, I'm just gonna push the double doors open and I'm just gonna burst into the room.
And that's exactly what I did. And as I burst in through the room, the music came on, like really loud music. And it was, This is Me from The Greatest Showman I burst in and literally there's this room full of smiling faces and people clapping and everything. And I was like, oh my God. And it was the most amazing feeling.
And, and then seeing people at the tables at the front who I knew, you know, oh, honestly, it was just fabulous. I absolutely loved it. And it felt like it was just a room. Well, it was, it didn't feel like it was, it was a room full of friends and people that I wanted to be with and wanted to spend time with.
And it was just the most amazing, amazing, amazing feeling. You know, nerves are one thing, but, but what you can nerves are and, and that sort of feeling that like, ooh, that sort of anxious you feeling. They're the same feelings as excitement. So every time that I got these sort of nervy feelings, I switched my mindset to actually these,
this isn't 'cause I'm anxious, this is because I'm really excited. And we have the most fantastic day, the most fantastic day. I, I can't tell you how, how much energy I got from being in that room with all of those people who had the same energy as me. We all wanted to draw, we all wanted to be there. We all were really,
really exciting. And it was absolutely amazing, absolutely amazing. And meeting some of my students for the first time, so, you know, I'd see them on Zoom all of the time, but actually meeting them in person and being able to give them a hug was just, oh, I can't tell you. It was absolutely wonderful. And yeah, we just had the,
we just had the best, best, best day. And now what's exciting is we've got, we've actually got the next event. This was, this was sort of like the pilot event, just to see kind of how it would work. But I, I always had the intention that it would be something that I kind of brought to all the, all of the different areas in the uk.
And our next one is in March in Edinburgh. Again, really, really excited. And what we've been able to do is kind of look at the, the one that we, we've just run and think, how can we make it even better? How can we make the experience even better? And we can do that by making it longer. You know,
two hours drawing is great, but it literally goes just like that. I mean, you sit down to draw and it's, and it's finished. So we've got a longer draw time, which is brilliant. And it also gives me the opportunity to draw something different or like a whole of something, which I think is again, really, really important to be able to do that.
So yeah, so we've, we've, we've, we've booked this next event and, and I'm so excited about this. I'm just so excited to, again, to be kind of in a room with, you know, like-minded people who are so excited to be, to be drawing. I, I, I just can't wait. I, I literally cannot wait.
It's the most, one of the things that I, well, so about four or five things that I love to do. So I love to draw. I love to draw live, I love drawing live. I really love food. So you can see I really love food, I love tea and I love chatting. And what better way to spend a day than drawing,
drinking tea, eating cake, and chatting to people. I can't think of anything better. So yeah, the next, the next one is, is March. And I'm just so incredibly excited about that. And I think you, I think you're gonna be able to buy tickets now as well, which again, we, we, I've, I've, I'm offering tickets outside of the membership this time.
So you'll get the chance to come and to come and spend the day with amazing people and have the most amazing time. We also had a fantastic photographer there and very luckily we have the, the photographer and the audio guys had such a lovely day. They said that they'll travel. So the same guys are coming up to do the party in Edinburgh. So it's almost like we've got this sort of continuity in the team.
And my, my team wore t-shirts. They wore the art party t-shirts, which was just, honestly, they looked, they just looked amazing. It was so exciting. I was like, oh Bonny, this is very professional. You know, me a slap dash, slap dash Bonny from Yorkshire. This was like, like proper professional. And I don't think I've come down from that cloud yet.
I think I'm still up there on cloud nine. I really do it. The, the, the feeling, just that buzz of being people who, you know, want to be there and are and are cheering your, it just is just amazing. So yeah, if you wanna come and join me, the tickets are on sale now and it's gonna be even,
it's gonna be longer and it's going to be amazing. It's gonna be incredible. And it's the most wonderful venue as well. Beautiful, beautiful venue in Edinburgh, just outside Edinburgh. Lovely sort of country, country house. It looks fantastic. It's got a spa and golf course and everything as well. So it does, it seems really, really lovely.
I'm gonna pop over in the new year and just have a, a quick sort of look and we've got more room this time as well, you know, so we won't be squeezing, squeezing between chairs. We'll have loads of room. So I'm really, really looking forward to it. So I'm hoping, oh gosh, the dogs are all getting up now.
I'm, I'm hoping that lots of you will, will join me in the new year. It's gonna be well March. It's going to be just, just fabulous. So that's kind of about it really. I've got a new tutorial coming in December. I'm gonna be starting it this week. Very different, very different to anything that I've done before. 'cause it is not going to be a draw along tutorial.
It's going to be based along my hierarchy of details. And I'm gonna be talking more about my hierarchy of details going forwards. I, I've not heard it talked about before. And it's something that the more I teach, the more I see, the more I see people going through the different stages, the more I see that there are, there's a definite process and we all go through the process,
different speeds because we all have different lives, different personalities, but we all go through a process of the hierarchy of details. And it's really, really, as a, as a teacher, it's really interesting to see and note that everybody goes through it. It's like, it's, it's like you have to go through that process to be able to understand,
you know, some people go through it so quickly, like literally from one piece to the next. Some people it takes longer and it's all very much down to personality, how much time you have to draw, all of that kind of thing. So I'm really excited about this tutorial coming in December for my Ignite members. And I think it's going to have a big light bulb moment effect for everybody.
They're gonna go, oh, I get what you, I get what you mean now I get what you mean, Bonnie. I completely understand. So I'm really excited about that, about that tutorial. And then like I say, I've got some beau lovely, lovely tutorials coming up in the new year. We've got a really colourful one, which isn't a kingfisher,
just, just to get everybody, everybody's getting really excited. Although we might do the kingfisher again, we might do that in art club, but I've got a lovely colourful tutorial coming up in January and we have the most gorgeous little yellow lab coming up in February. And then I've got some tonal work coming through, more human portraits. I'm really enjoying my human portraiture and more and more of my students are loving it as well,
which is, I I I, it's so great to see as a, as an animal artist and, and I've been an animal artist for, you know, quite a long time now I'm seeing more and more humans coming and it's really exciting actually that people are getting excited about drawing humans. And, and the the biggest thing that I've realized from starting to draw humans is that my drawing has taken a,
I think has taken another step. And my development in drawing my animals has, has changed and has developed because you have to have a slightly different set of skills for humans. You know, you're kind of looking out for different things, the different color mixes, you know, you really do have to get those values correct, but you've also gotta think about the piece that I've just done.
It's got a big colourful background. When you take the colorful background away and you just draw the, the portraits, the head and shoulders, you've actually got to make some adjustments to the values. Otherwise it, it looked weird. You know, I, I actually started this portrait again because I was drawing the values as they were in the photograph and I was like,
this just isn't working. And it was because it was such a rich photograph, but it had all of the background in as well that when you took that the background away and you just had the portrait, the colours were too saturated. So I had to have a play around and find sort of like a gentler way of, you know, of, of bringing the colours and everything in which again,
really interesting and you don't get to appreciate those things until you sort of push yourself and, and you try different things. So, you know, very excited about my, the human stuff and really excited about, you know, my students work and them doing more humans as well. So, I mean, I'm still, you know, predominantly animals, but the,
the humans are coming into it too, which is I think is great 'cause we get the opportunity to draw things like clothes and, you know, hair, human hair is very different to animal fur. I think I'm gonna bring one of those in as well. Bring a, a few tutorials in just around the human hair side of stuff because it's, you know,
again, really, really important to understand kind of how the layering and how we can get all of that detail in there. So yeah, lots and lots to come and we've also got a big plans in making the membership even better. We're going to be making some, a few little, I'm saying little changes, well, some changes to the content experience,
which is going to amazing. It's amazing already, but it's gonna make it even better and even easier to use. So I'm very excited about that. That's coming in 2024. I'm actually working with the platform provider at the moment and they're helping me to, to sort of, you know, just iron out a few little bits and pieces and then we're gonna make it even better for the members,
much more personalized, all of that kind of stuff. So I'm really, really excited about that. So yeah, lots, lots happening, quieting down a little bit for December. I've done my last commission. I've got the most beautiful photograph that I'm drawing from my own. For me, just for me. I've been, I'm very much into Yellowstone at the moment.
I dunno whether anybody else is watching it, but I'm on season four, I'll be really sad when I finish. But yeah, so very much into Yellowstone and the cowboys and everything, and I've been trying to look for a, a really great sort of western cowboy photograph, but not one where it's at a rodeo or, you know, anything like that.
Anyway, I found a photograph, which I really like. It's a gentle photo. It's western, it's got some of the western attack, you know, the saddle and everything in there. And that's what I'm gonna be doing for my, for my Christmas present to myself, which I'm very excited about. So thank you all for listening to me rambling on getting all excited about my art party.
And I do hope that some of you, you know, come and join me in March because honestly it was the best, best, best experience. So I'll see you all soon. I'll see you all, yeah, very soon. The next time it will be flipping. Happy New Year.
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.
