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 Bonnny 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're in the right place. Grab a cup and a cu cream. Let's get cracking.
I hold quite a few live q and a sessions and it's always really interesting hearing the varied questions I'm asked, and as usual, I'm always really happy to share my experiences and knowledge following is one of those live q and a sessions. Enjoy.
Hello everybody. Hopefully you can, hopefully you can hear me okay. There's a chat function in here as well, which I'm just going to enable hopefully. Yep. So you can pop something in the chat if you want to say hello. It's gonna be a really, really super hour that we've got here. Do, do pop who you are and, and where you're from in the chat.
I'd love to, oh, we've got Lisa here from no Nova Scotia. Hi Lisa. Lovely to see you here. Yeah, we've got a great hour ahead of us. I'm gonna do a little short presentation. Just want to talk you through my three steps, basically three really great tips for helping you develop your art and really go for it in 2023. It's not about setting resolutions or anything like that, but I just want to kind of give you some really, really great information that that's gonna help you. And then we're gonna have a q and a after that as well.
So I'm just gonna go through the chat here. Welcome everybody. If you've never been on one of my sessions before, welcome. Nice to see you. Well, I can't see you, but you can see me. You are in for a treat. It's all very laid back. I'm gonna give you as much information as you want. You can ask any question you like around, well, you can ask any question you like, but it will be, it will probably, probably be useful for you if it's around, coloured pencil creativity, that kind of thing. We've got Lisa here. We've got Steph from Milton, Keens and Bev from, oh, snowy Gloucester. We haven't got any snow here. We've had a bit of frost. Catherine from North Carolina and Karen, Karen and Aberdeenshire. Jill and Cambria. So just up the, up the road from me, Hilda and Argyle.
Chevon from Cork Island, Kathy from Pennsylvania, and Debbie in the uk and Adriana in Romania. Joan in, yes, it is gloomy in North Yorkshire, isn't it, Joan? It really is. Camilla and Karen and Shannon and Nick and Paula and Marie and Chris and Cindy and Lisa and Jane and Robert and Charlene. I'm not gonna go through all of them cuz there's hundreds of them on there.
Thank you all so much for joining me. This is recorded. It is being recorded. So if you have to drop out, don't worry. You're gonna get a link sent back to you via email tomorrow. Oh, we've got somebody with a hand up there. Who's that? I've got ask us with a hand up. If you've got a question,
do pop something in the, pop it in the chat. If you've got a question, there is a q and a section down at the bottom. Pop your question into the q and a box, and I will pick that up once I finish my little presentationy thing, which I'm gonna share my screen in a second. So yeah, thank you for joining me.
Welcome. We've got an hour ahead of us. I'm gonna go through a few things, three tips basically to help you make your 2023 the best year yet. Anybody with a hand up, please just pop whatever it is that you need to say in, in the chat, or you can add your question into the q and a box. So yeah,
lovely to see you all. So I'm gonna come to the questions at the end. What I'm gonna do now is I'm just going to share my screen and we're gonna do a very quick presentation with the things that I want to share with you. So I'm just gonna share my screen very quickly. Okay, so into here. So we've got my presentation here,
and basically what we're gonna be talking about today is taking your coloured pencils, dreams from resolution to reality, and kickstarting an artistic journey that will last for years to come. Talking about coloured pencils, because that's my media. If you, you know, if you don't use coloured pencils and you, you use something else, then this is also going to be incredibly useful for you because it's just all about creativity,
setting goals and all of that kind of thing. So my top three tips that I want to talk to you about today are goal setting, time and commitment and mindset. I put time and commitment as kind of one tip because they're both sort of inter intertwined, if you like, goal setting. What I don't want to happen is that you set yourself such rigid goals that you become really anxious if things don't work out.
They've gotta be fluid. You know, if you set a goal, you've, you can kind of be really flexible with it. You can go down a different avenue if the opportunity arises, or you can completely change your mind if, if something happens as well. The thing with setting goals is that you actually have something in the back of your head that you can then your subconscious then works on while you're asleep,
while you're doing other things. You've heard me talk about reticular activating system before the r a s, which is part of our brain that filters out things that aren't important to us. So whatever we feed into our head, whatever we think about, whatever we talk about, our reticular activating system will filter out what we don't need. And that's why it's so,
so, so important to make sure that what we're putting into our minds, into our brains, into our, you know, feeding into our mindset is what we want to happen. And the problem is that this is where negativity comes in. This is where when we talk about, oh, I can't do that, where we go, oh gosh, I'd really love to do this,
but it's not possible. I can't do it. Oh, I'm rubbish. And our critical self voice comes into play and our reticular activating system picks up on that as well. It doesn't, doesn't see one as being good and one is seeing one as bad. It sees it as just information that we need and it will feed out the stuff that we don't want.
And that's why it's really important to make sure that what we are listening to, surrounding ourselves with is positivity and what it is actually that we want to do. So we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about time and commitment. If you want to develop your work, if you want, whether it's a hobby, whether you want to take your art further into 2023 and make a,
make more of a business with it. Time and commitment is crucial. You know, we all know by setting time aside and being committed to do what we want to do, that's, that's when we're going to be able to see changes. That's where we're going to be able to develop our work. So it's really, really important to make a commitment for 2023 that you are actually going to do this.
Or do you know what, actually it's not that important and I've got something else that's more important and that's okay. But make a decision and make a commitment. And then of course the mindset is so, so, so important. You know, it, it's, it's part of all three of those tips really. Mindset is so important for anything. If you can get your mindset cracked in,
you can get into that really lovely space of most of the time being positive. I'm not saying all of the time cause it's not, it's not possible to all, all of the time be positive. But looking at that critical inner voice, looking at what you are saying to yourself, look at your words that you are saying to other people. Look at the words that you are writing down.
And you know what, even I see myself as being quite a positive person. Even someone like me who, who can be ridiculously positive at times, I, I'll have a coaching session and, and, and I'm asked a question and I'll reply to that question and I'll say, D Bonnie, why are you using those words? And I, we use words completely unconsciously,
and they're just words that kind of, I, I guess we're used to using, I was talking about being more organized, which I have worked on, but I was talking about my need. I need to be more organized. When I use that word need, there's a real negative connotation around it. It means that, mm, I'm not actually doing it and I need to do it because,
you know, I should be doing it. And if I should be doing it, then, you know, perhaps I'm not doing it. And that's really bad. And we've gotta be really, really careful about the language that we use and the vocabulary that we use in our heads and outside when we're talking to other people. I'm gonna talk about that as well.
Lost my, my mouse there. Okay, so we're coming onto just checking this chat that we haven't got anything. Yes. So the secret of making progress is to get started. We all know that. And we all also know that it can be incredibly hard to get started. Procrastination is one of the biggest things that stops us from doing anything, you know,
and usually it's fear, it usually stop. The, the reason why we're not doing something is based on fear. Fear of failure, fear of fear of success, fear of change, fear of, you know, upsetting people because you are, you are spending time doing something that you want to do and, and people want you to do stuff that they want to do.
There's an awful lot of reasons why we're not going to get started, but it's so worth it. It is so worth starting. Just starting. So on the left here is my first portrait from 2016, and on the right is a portrait that was done, I think about two months afterwards. Now, the difference is significant. I, I mean,
it really is significant. This one is, there's nothing wrong with it. It's great. I was incredibly proud of it. You know, I put it on my Facebook. There were conversations around it. Off the back of this one, I got commission people asking for commissions, and I had one person saying, oh, you should bring a little bit of more bone structure in there.
And at first I was a bit and didn't want to, and then I thought, actually, do you know what I I, I'm understand what they're saying and I'm going to do something about it. So this is where I put my plan of action into place. Goal setting doesn't have to be this big thing. It doesn't have to be, oh,
I want to take my business to, you know, whatever, and I wanna sell this many commissions. Goal setting can be and should be about your drawing development and coming into a new year. It's a really, really good time to kind of set those goals in motion. So that's what I did with this piece here. I decided I wanted to create things that were more realistic.
I wanted to bring a little bit more of the, the structure into my pieces. And this is when I drew this piece, and I was incredibly proud of this. All my pieces in the early days were totally freehanded. I started with the eye and I worked out, so a lot, lots of my pieces kind of ended up, ended up going off the paper because I,
I wasn't very good at sort of judging sizing and everything like that. But I put a plan of a, a plan of action into place. And that plan of action was then part of what I was thinking subconsciously. And every time I put pencil to paper, that was, that was basically what was getting me through. I was thinking, right,
what do I need to do here? How do I need to develop? What do I want my work to look like? I also put the work in I drew every single day. Now I've done a podcast recently about time. We all have exactly the same amount of time every single day. We all have 24 hours. The majority of us wish we probably had double that amount of time,
but we don't. We have 24 hours. And it is completely up to you as to what you do with those 24 hours. Personally, I stopped ironing. I'm not saying you have to stop ironing, but I stopped ironing. That was four hours on a Sunday afternoon that I got back that I clawed back. There were other things that were not a priority.
Yeah, I probably should have been doing them, I probably should have been hoovering every single day. But you know what, I didn't have to. And I made time for my art because my art and my drawing was so important to me. And very early on I realized just how important it was because it gave me that period of time that gave me complete clarity,
totally switched my brain off, allowed me just to disappear into my own world and not have to worry about family life, about work, about, you know, I was going through marital problems at the time. I could just completely disappear. Obviously, I was there in person, but my head was somewhere completely different. So I, I gave myself time.
I, I prioritized my creativity. And at this point I didn't have a business. It was purely a hobby, but I realized how important it was for me to do that. The other thing that I did as well was I was incredibly proud of every single piece I did. And that hasn't changed. I've been drawing now for nearly seven years. I've been a full-time artist for nearly six years.
1st of January, 2023 will be my six year mark. And every single piece of work I have done, I have been proud of. There have been times where it's been really challenging where, you know, the picture might not have been great or I might have made a mistake or something like that, but there has not been one picture ever where I have screwed it up and got really crossed.
I've never lost my patience with a, with a drawing. I, I see it as my sacred space, if you like. And I see it as everything that goes into one of my pieces of work is so, so important. And it's me that the whole of me goes into one of my pieces of work and I need to be proud of me.
And that's why I'm, I'm incredibly proud of every single piece of, of work that I do. These are, you know, a few more tips, but the, the main ones are those goal settings. The time and the mindset. Being proud is really gonna help your mindset become more positive. It's gonna really, really help stop that critical inner voice,
which is there to spoil everything. And it does spoil everything and it stops people creating. And it, and it kind of, it makes people read into things what isn't there. And it's, in a way, it's there to kind of help you, but it's there to help you stay in a place where you are now, which it sees as being relatively safe.
And actually, you know, when you make changes, it's usually for the better. The other thing as well that I got with this particular, with the, with the, the pieces here no comparing. I, I've, I have compared my p my pieces to others in the past. And it hasn't been useful between these two pieces here, which is about sort of two months.
There was no comparison with any other pieces. I don't think I even followed anybody else, to be honest, that early on in my drawing, I was just really happy drawing and doing what I was doing. Okay, so, and then we've got this bit, this one here, this was from 2016, and this one is 2022. So we've got,
what, six years here? Six years, yeah, six years. The, they're both good, you know, they're both really, really good. This one you can see is far more honed. I've got color in this one. You know, I've really, really learnt my craft in those six years. I've given it time and I've talked about time,
something that we've all got and how we have to prioritize. And it's about prioritizing what's important to us. My art has been so important to me, not only for my wellbeing and my mental health, but also because it's allowed me to make a living and to, to make some huge changes in how I live my life. And it's all down to my art,
you know, that's what has, has given me my life back, basically. And it's allowed me, I'm a single mom, it's allowed me to make changes to my house. I've had an extension made, I, I've, I've had a studio put down in the garden. I haven't got my car yet, but that's coming. But my art has done that.
And the reason that my art has done that is because I have prioritized it, prioritized what I see as being really important to me. And I've put the time in. Now, commitment is really, really, really important. Particularly if you do want to take your art to the next level, and you do want to perhaps make a living from it.
It, well, even if you, it's not just a hobby. I see my art as being a hobby even now. It's, it's my, it's my space to go where I, I love it. I draw every single day or night, and I love it. Whether it's drawing a tutorial, a commission, or if it's a piece just for me,
it's all the same. I absolutely love it. I am committed. I am a very committed person, to be honest. If I say I'm gonna do something, then I will do it. And that has really helped me on my journey to success in my business, and also to take in my, my drawing skills better. I, I've put that commitment in.
Now, it's really important that we kind of go back to that comparing. It's really, really important to pace yourself. What you'll see is you'll see once you start drawing and you start posting your drawings and you start joining groups, you will see that there is so, well, there are so many artists who do very similar things to you. And then it start,
you start to think, oh my goodness, there's so many people out there, you know, and I, I've got to be the same as so and so, and oh my goodness. Look at them. They're putting two drawings a week out, or, you know, eight. I mean, when I first started, I was doing eight commissions a month,
which was ridiculous. Pacing yourself is so important. Going at your speed and nobody else's, if you go at your speed, you will be able to commit and you will be able to create that consistency rather than going at somebody else's speed and then becoming burnt out. You are far better to start, as you mean to go on and be really, really honest with yourself.
Okay, so I'm gonna create this commission business. Honestly, how many pieces can I get done a month? If it's two brilliant, it's two, you know, that's what, 24 pieces in a year. That's amazing. And yes, you might start off with your pricing quite low, but by the time you've developed your skills, you've put all of the work in,
you can sell your work for an awful lot more. I started drawing in 2016, a piece like this. This was free, but a piece like this was costing 40 pounds, okay? Which at that time I was like, oh my goodness, that no, who is gonna buy my work? Now, a piece like this is gonna cost you about 1500 pounds.
My, I think I have about 1500 people on my wait list. That's not to say everybody's gonna buy, and I am completely booked out until 2024. I'll be opening my wait list, middle of 2023 to book in for 2024. And what I tend to do is I'll send an email out and I book a whole year in one go. For me,
that has been a really great strategy because it means I can really plan my year, then I can, I can really, you know, and then my goals kind of fit within that, and my whole strategy fits within that. So even if you're thinking now, oh my goodness, my, my, you know, my pricing is really low, that's okay.
You know, it doesn't matter if you're low, everybody's gotta start somewhere. But it's about, and this isn't about pricing, you know, if there's some questions about pricing, I'm really happy to to talk about that. But it's about be it's about being confident with your pricing. If you're confident with your pricing, then you can start to just increase it steadily.
That's all I did. All I did was increase my prices steadily. And I've gone from 40 to 1500 with people buying not 1500 and nobody buying. You know, I've got people buying and a full year in advance booked up. So pace yourself, go at your own speed. Nobody else's. Everybody's got their own speed. Everybody does their own thing.
Some people, you know, people think I'm speedy. I don't think I'm particularly speedy. I think I put a lot of hours in. But for me, I do a portrait, a portrait of week. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer depending on the subject. The other thing as well is there's always going to be something that will get in the way of your art.
And this is where you have to think about, well, what's actually important to me? We have families, we have jobs on, on the side, all of that. When I first started in 2016, I was married three children. I had horses, I had a full-time job. I was also going overseas to work too. I was really,
I've always been really busy, but I was really busy. And what I ended up doing was actually stealing a little bit of sleep time, which is never a good thing. But then I started to realize how important this was for me, and that's when I started to stop doing things like ironing and cooking and washing and cleaning, teaching my children how to do their own,
which is a, that's a really good, that's a really good thing to do, teaching children to cook. But, you know, I, I started dropping things that weren't a priority for me. And, and that's, that's how I fitted everything in. The other thing as well is, you know, how much do you actually want this? How much do you want to take your hobby so that you are,
you are, you are really enjoying your drawing and you're incredibly proud of what you're doing. Maybe you're entering exhibitions or getting in the gallery or something, you know, how, how much do you want to make a living from your art? Because if you really want it, you will put the time in and you will find the time. If, if you,
if you don't really want it, and it's not actually that much of a priority, then you know, you'll just sort of find little spaces, maybe a couple of times a week, something like that to fit something in. Now, I'm not being flippant when I say this. You know, you might be thinking, what are you talking about? I'm so busy and I can't,
I know what busy is. I, I'm, I'm a busy person, but I also know how much I want something and I will find the time to do it. They always say, don't they? If you want something doing, give it to a busy person because they end up being probably better at prioritizing. They end up being, you know,
good at organization and stuff like that. I'm getting better at organizing, but how much do you want this, you know, and that's a really important question to ask yourself. So let's talk about your mindset quickly. How can you be more positive about your creativity? And this is something that is a habit, and it's a habit that we need to change.
What happens is we tell ourselves we can't, we tell ourselves we are rubbish. We tell ourselves the amount of people, the amount of emails. I get messages, I get, oh gosh, I'm just drawing this, this dog or the cat or this horse. I, oh, I can't, I don't know about the colors. I have no idea what colors to pick.
Can you help me? Of course I'll help actually, if you just sat there and went, do you know my colors? You know that, you know, yellow and blue make green. I know that blue and red make purple. I know that orange and yellow and red make orange. I know the, the, the basics of color. And I know that if I put blue on an orange dog,
I'd probably get a greenie color. So actually we, we do know more than what we think we know. And I think it's just sitting down and reminding ourselves about how much we actually do know. I think it's really important to work out what's stopping you from creating. A lot of the time people will say, oh, I haven't got, I haven't got time to,
to create, or, oh, I've got a a block, you know, I haven't drawn for months because I've just got this block. Actually, the block is not the creative bit block. The block will be something else. And that's where it's a really good idea to start doing that self-reflection, really looking at what's going on in your life and determining what it is that's stopping you from being creative.
Because ridiculously the creativity bit will help with whatever's blocking it, you know? And if you can just get a bit of an inkling about what it actually is and what's really stopping me from creating, then you'll be able to kind of put some actions into place. You know, I, I get that's an awful lot of the time, oh, I haven't got time to do this.
I, I know for a fact when I say to somebody, I haven't got time, you know, somebody says, oh, you know, would you like to come here? Or Would you like to come to this event thing? I'm a member of a networking group. Would we'd like to come to this networking group thing down in London? And I'll be sitting there and what I'll say is,
oh, I'm so sorry. I haven't got time. My diary's absolutely full. I could very easily go down to London. I I have got the time to do it because I can make the time. The actual truth is I don't wanna go. It is, I mean, that is like the worst thing for me. I really don't like going to big dues where I don't really know people and getting dressed up and looking all glam is just not me.
So I've started being far more truthful when somebody says, oh, would you, could you do this? And I'll say, actually, no. I was asked to write another book a couple of months ago by the same publisher, sister publisher to the one that I had my first book published with. And to be asked to write a book is, is a,
is a amazing thing. It's real kudos. And I was like, oh gosh, wow. Brilliant. And then I saw what it was, what the book was going to be about, and it wasn't my style. They were quick drawings, they were little sort of mandala things. And I thought, y yeah, it's great to be asked to write a book,
but this is not my style and it's not where I'm headed and it's not really what I want to do. If I write that book, it's going to take quite a chunk of time up. And actually I could do, I want to write my own book, which I am doing. I'm writing my own book. So instead of saying, oh,
I haven't got time, I was very honest with the publisher. I said, look, I would get in touch with somebody who is actually a specialist in drawing this style of, of drawing. I said, I'm so honored that you asked me, but this isn't something that I can do because it doesn't fit with my brand and where I want to go.
That way I was being completely honest with myself. I was keeping my integrity and I was being completely honest to the publisher. So of course then they're not kind of, you know, re-asking me. And it's really, really important to be honest with yourself. What is it actually that's stopping you from being creative and digging deep and finding out what it is?
And are you serious about developing, setting some achievable goals? And I, like I said at the beginning, this isn't about setting rigid goals. This is about a mood board. You know, I've got my mood board here, you know, what do you want on my mood board? I've got a garden studio where I've got a garden, I've got eating more healthily on my mood board.
This was set the beginning of 2022. I have my garden studio, I have my garden. I'm eating far more healthily. I've still got my car up there and I haven't got that yet, but it will come. All of these different things, they're on my mood board, they're all there that I can see every single day. Every time I sit at my desk,
I can see my mood board, my dream board, and I can see what's on it. I have clear goals in my head. I use a a, a program called monday.com. And I have all of the projects in there. I've got new projects coming up, I put them in, I write about them, I've got them going on in my head.
And it's just, it really, really helps me to kind of understand and pick up opportunities for all of those different things. Prioritize your creativity, make time for it. Not because you're gonna make a business of it or anything like that, but because it's so, so, so good for you. Being creative is so good for your healthy mind. You know,
we talk about busy hands, quiet mind. It's so true. Even if you're just coloring or doing some crafting, prioritize your creativity, make some time for it. And then by doing this, you'll also be creating healthier mindset habits, always making sure that you are trying to find the positive in every, in everything that you do. So every piece that you draw,
try and find something that's that's really positive about it. And, and that way you are going to see success. You are going to see development in your work, and that's what's incredibly important. So I think this last slide, okay, so this is from one of my members and she posted this y yesterday and I asked her if I could borrow this quote because I think this,
it, this sums everything up. So after three years of unsuccessfully trying to run my commission business, I finally found, she finally found me and took her advice to open my books is a one off to my whole waiting list. Mailing lists are incredibly important for an, for any kind of business. If you haven't got a mailing list, start one.
And she booked up the whole of 20, 23 commissions within 24 hours. You know, one, a four commission every three weeks, not working in holidays, but she's doubled her prices since two years ago and every one of the bookings has paid their deposit. And she's, and this is what makes my heart sing, finally, she's starting to feel that she's worth it,
which is just unbelievably incredible. And this is what, and her work is, oh my goodness, fabulous. But this is what it's all about. She decided she was gonna go for it. She put a plan in place, she made a waiting list, you know, she created that, that mailing list. She told people about it, she's got people on it.
She then sent an email out and within 24 hours, she's got the whole of 2023 booked up, you know, 24 portraits, which is fantastic. So she's now got her whole year planned out, which is amazing. If she wants to fit some more in, she can. This is what I'm talking about when I, when I, when I talk about commitment,
putting the time in and setting goals, not necessarily for somebody who wants to run a business, but for all of us. And it's so, so, so important, you know, if you're wanting to kind of progress and, and, and kind of go down that route. So I'm gonna finish this presentation now. I'm gonna stop sharing. I'm gonna come back here so you can see me.
I'm gonna have a look at these questions. We've got quite a few of them. Oh, where, right, where is it? Where are these questions gone? Oh, they're here. Oops, there, they're, okay. So I'm gonna start up at the top here. So I've got, I've got Nicki, what do you find are the best colors for blonde hair?
I'm struggling, struggling to get the tones. Pale is blonde, for example. What I would say when it comes to pale things, white things, blonde things, our brain sees them as paler than what they are. My suggestion would either to create a little viewfinder in something like Photoshop or to get a white piece of paper and punch hole out, put it on your reference photo and just look at the colors through there so that you can actually see what the color is.
For blonde hair, I would be using those, the lovely creamy colors. So Polychromos ivory, bium in the Luminance range. Pablo's have got some, a nice cream color as well, for example, but I'd also probably use some, some violet tones in there for your shadows. Violets were always gonna work well with the yellow, purple, and yellow opposites on the,
on the wheel. So your violets and those yellowy creamy colors are always gonna work beautifully. But just be careful that you don't just do it all that pale color. You wanna get some of those darker elements in there as well. You know, using stronger color, but with very light pressure, it's gonna give you a little tiny bit of, of pigment.
You can maybe then put a cream over the top or a white over the top, something like that. Okay, so we've got a great, great question here from Mika. Do I think paper matters? Yes, I think the surface you draw on has a huge amount to do with what you want to get out of your piece. And I think it's not the,
well, it's definitely not the same for everybody when it comes to surfaces. For me it's a really good idea to use a few to get to grips with a f with a few, try a few out because that way you are really, really going to understand which one works for you. Some of us are naturally light-handed, some of us are naturally really heavy-handed.
Some of us absolutely adore a smooth paper. When I first started drawing, I was doing coloring books. The coloring books that I was using. It was that milli, oh, I can't remember her name now. She does all of those beautiful coloring books. They tended to have a very smooth paper. So when I started doing my own drawings, I wanted a super smooth paper and I was buying all of these different pads going,
I just want a really, really smooth, actually, I didn't want smooth at all. And I, so, and I, and I discovered Pastelmat and that was it. I was like, oh my, wow, this is amazing. Pastelmat is so far removed from smooth, but it really suited how I drew getting the, the base layers in all of that kind of stuff.
The, you know, working on the values and everything and I've tried a few different surfaces and I always come back to Pastelmat. It's my favorite, but everybody's different. So I think paper definitely matters. Try a few. I always say I kissed a few frogs before from my Prince of papers, but it's really true, somewhat, some will just completely connect with you and you'll love it and others will be like,
oh, I can't possibly use that. So I think, yeah, definitely. Peggy, how many floral tutorials do I have available at the moment? I have, I have. So I've, I've been predominantly concentrating on animals and, and I haven't been interested at all in drawing anything other than animals. And then all of a sudden, I dunno whether it's because I've developed or I don't know,
but I've got really interested in other subjects as well. Floral's been one of them, botanicals and humans. So I've d I've got one in-depth sunflower tutorial, and I've got more botanicals coming in 2023, early 2023. And I want to do more of those little studies and everything. The latest one that I've done, you, you couldn't call it botanical,
but drawn a leaf, a few other leaves on the floor. But I definitely want to do more of that because I love my animals and it's always my passion. But I've got to the point now where it's like I could, it sounds really big, honey, but it's almost like I could draw anything, you know, if I've got the passion for it,
I could draw anything I wanted to because I've got the skills, I've got the, the techniques and everything. So botanicals, obviously it's, it's a little bit different. I wouldn't be doing it in the, the very structured way that the true botanical artists would draw. But I've really enjoyed doing, using a little bit of color in all different colors to animals.
Nikki, any idea why Pat Razor struggles to lift color from Pastelmat paper? I'm having better results with magic tape. Nikki, I would ask what pencils you're using on the Pastelmat. You can, you can put it in the q and a again, if you like. And I would be asking what pressure you're using. I'd also be asking what kneadable or rais you are using.
So when it comes to Pastelmat, I like the hard dry pencils. I've stopped saying oil wax, all of that because they're all made of the same ingredients, just in different quantities. So I like the hard dry pencils. The hard dry pencils are Polychromos and for me, Pablos, they're not sort of soft and creamy. They're, they're, they lay down and there's on pastel mats,
you can move the pigment around. If you use light pressure, if you use your putty eraser on a hard dry pencil like a Pablo or Polychromos and you've used light pressure, you'll be able to pick it up really quite easily. So my, my, I I suspect you're either using a, a softer pencil, like a Luminance maybe, or prisma and potentially using a little bit heavier pressure.
Magic tape is fantastic. And you know what, if you're having good results with magic tape, I'd carry on using magic tape. Everybody's different. And I always say, you know, if if it's not broke, you know, don't fix it, Barb, I seem to be blending my colors too early on past mine. Is there a rule of someone handling last reply?
So I think it depends on, when you talk about blending for me, if I'm gonna do a background and I've got, I want to get like a nice fuzzy, soft background, I'll probably want about three or four layers before I use a cotton bud or something like that on it. If I'm drawing layers on an animal, actually you're blending as soon as you put that second layer in,
you're, you're blending. So I think it depends on what you mean by blending, whether you're kind of blending with a, with another pencil, but I'd probably say second, third layer, I might go in with a lighter pencil just to kind of sm you know, smear everything out a little bit. I tend to use Pablo's in over the top of Polychromos because they are really good at moving the pigment around,
but I don't think there's any specific rule on how many layers. I think it's, if you're not happy with the result, then do something a little bit different. So maybe put a few more layers in before you are using Cotton Bud or a, or a paper slump, something like that. Brenda, do I suffer with backache or worry about my back?
I, I suffer from really bad joint and backache. I've got hip replacement, I have really dodgy knees. I've actually invested in a very good chair. It's the, I can't remember the name of it now, but it's a really, really good chair and it leans right back. So it's kind of supports me as I'm moving. The other thing that I've got,
which I've found ha, has been incredibly helpful. I've actually got a sheep skin that I'm sitting on. So I've got a sheep skin rug that I sit on and it keeps me cool in the summer and it keeps me warm in the winter and it also makes it really, really comfortable. I've got a wide bottom, they don't make, oh, it's a Herman Mill chair,
that's the one that I've got and they always make, and they've got little bits of plastic on the sides and of course somebody with a wide bottom, their bottom kind of spills over the sides. Sounds awful, doesn't it? But, you know, and and having that sheet skin on has, has really, really helped. The other thing that's really helped is I get regular,
I go to the chiropractor regularly. I was quite sort of, I, I tend to draw like that. So I tend to end up like that with my head on one side drawing like that. And if you draw like that for any period of time, you, you seize up, especially when you get a little bit older, you end up seizing up.
So I have to be careful that I get up on a regular basis. It helps having a new puppy cuz you kind of have to get up every 20 minutes. But, but yes, if you find yourself seizing up, I would set an alarm or wear an Apple watch or something like that. Something that's going to make you stand up and move around a bit.
And I also, I I've started swimming, although I haven't swim for the last couple of weeks, but that little bit of exercise really helps too. So yeah, you, you've gotta be careful, you've gotta get up and move. Okay, so when drawing on regular toned past paper, not pastoral, Matt, do I need to layer a base layer of pale color over the subject before mapping out the darts?
Especially if I want to subtract with a erase. Now this will depend on the paper that you're using and you'll probably need to just experiment on this. So if you wanted to use the slice tool, I find on regular paper putting down a, a layer of something that's softer, I guess waxier like Luminance or a SMA or something like that because it just sort of,
it covers that tooth up and it allows the, the slice tool just to kind of slice through basically. So to me it would, it would be about experimenting and see how that works for the, the specific paper you've got. You might not need it, you might need it. I would say if you've got a toned paper, I probably wouldn't use the slice tool.
I would probably look at making sure that I've got my lighter areas isolated. But I would definitely, I'd definitely experiment with that and just see how, how that works. Moira, can I work with only one brand of pencils? Poly chrom are more available than Karen Dash? Yes, of course you can. And what I'd say is, you know,
if you are joining me in in January for, for the academy, January opens on the third. So hopefully some of you will, will join me because it's is, is is a wonderful community. You can just swap the pencils out and we can, you know, there's always somebody on hand me or somebody else that can help you with finding an alternative.
We use Karen Holes, a fantastic her conversion chart, which you can, which you can buy from her website. It's a really, really good resource I have to say. So, you know, don't, don't worry too much. There'll be something that you can swap it out with Kathy. I've been drawing animals for four years, but I feel I make some of the animals older than they are.
I'm guessing this is going to be around your use of values, Kathy, and really starting to understand and look deeply at how the values are working. In my head I'm thinking black animal shine and what's happening is it's actually looking like they've got a little bit of gray in there rather than shine. So it's about the, the color that you use, it's also about the difference in the light area and the dark area of your values that that kind of,
the distance between the two, which will make it look like white fur or it will make it look like shine. And that is what might really, really help you is to trans transfer your or, or take the color away from your image and from your drawing. So look at them in gray scale and that way you should be able to kind of determine where you've gone too light,
in which case it's looking like white fur run than shine. When we see shine on a black dog, we tend to see it as really bright white and actually it's, it's usually not, it's usually quite a few shades darker than what we actually think it is. So that's what I think is probably happening there. Kathy, Trisha, do I have a manifesting person I would recommend for positivity and growth?
Oh gosh, so 2022 has been the most amazing year for me for putting myself into circles of people who inspire me and make me want to be a better person. I absolutely, and do you know, what's, what I've found is that there are people right at the top of their game who don't necessarily talk about manifesting, but they talk about all of the,
the bits that go with manifesting. So the, the positivity, the putting yourself out there, the goal setting, the putting out what you want to receive back. I now listen to podcasts. I don't listen to any news at all, which might sound like I'm sticking my head in the sand, but I, I just don't want to, I don't want any part of me filled with anything awful.
I, I I saying that I, I I give to charity on a regular basis. I, I support charity and, and you know, if I see something coming up in Facebook, I'm, I'm always giving to charity. It's something that I really like to do. So Denise Darfield Thomas in Australia, she's got the most fantastic books and she's got the audio books and she reads the audio books and she's brilliant to listen to.
So there's Denise Darfield, Thomas, James Wetmore, if you're looking to grow your business, look at James Wetmore. He is amazing. He's got a fantastic podcast as well called Business by Business. No, he's got, he's got a course called Business by Design and his podcast is called Mind Your Business and it's a mixture of spirituality, mind, all of that kind of stuff.
The podcast that I am completely hooked on at the moment is the Stephen Bartlett podcast, which is the diary of c e o and listening to all kinds of different people is just incredibly inspiring. And those are the three that I would really, really recommend. There's, there's all sorts of others as well, but those are the three that I would really recommend.
There's, oh gosh, what's his name? I can't remember his name. I'll have to write a list of them. But yeah, those, those three, absolutely, definitely. Okay, so Moya, again, I'm a pet portrait artist, but I've only worked in oil paints. Any texture including coloured pencils in your repertoire? I would say as a separate medium,
if you worked on a surface like Pastelmat, you, you would probably work in a, in a similar way as in building your base layers up and then bringing your details in on the top. So it's not gonna feel completely alien. Obviously you've got a hard pencil rather than a relatively soft brush. That's what I found really difficult when I went the other way from coloured pencils to oil.
I found it really, really, really hard. I, I kind of, I I needed that resistance, if you like, and that's something that you might need to kind of work on. But I, I would pick, pick a surface that will allow you to have a similar way of working to your oil paints where you can get all of that,
the, all of those base layers down and, and bring the details up from there. So Sharon does want to do commissions. When do you know when your drawings are ready to sell? I've not been drawing long, but people have seen what I've done and asked me to draw for them. I said no. Also would you, what would be a good price to charge?
Okay, so a good, a good time when you're ready to sell is when people ask you because they're seeing your work and they want it. So, so perfect time, perfect time Sharon. So stop saying no and say yes, start saying no to other stuff and start saying yes to that, that that's the time. Otherwise there's no time is there,
do we wait until we're, we're perfect and, and this we're never perfect, are we? Cuz we're all, we're all still learning. So I would say people are saying, yeah, then say yes when it comes to pricing. So a little tip when it comes to pricing, a little, a little trick that you can do that, that really helps this in one of the academy confidence sessions when it comes to us,
it's really difficult to sell when we're, when we're first starting out because it's so personal. It's like selling our soul, you know, it's like what? You're put price on me. Well, I'm not worth anything. And that's the problem. That is a really, really big problem when it comes, when we're first starting to sell. Art is a really big problem.
So what I did was, and I have got a video on this, but what I did was I looked at my peers, I looked at people who were at a similar level to me doing a, at a similar stage. So they'd done it for a similar sort of time. I looked at their prices and I looked at their development and I kind of took a,
an average and I put myself in the middle. Okay? And that's where, that's where I first, that's where I first started actually, to be honest, when I, when I very first started selling portraits, I kind of just picked a, picked a price that didn't feel scary and that was like 40 pounds. What I say now is if you can just pick a price,
so say 50 pounds for a portrait, which isn't, isn't a lot at all, and you really shouldn't be choosing that. But when you first start out, that could be a good first step. So take that 50 pounds and think on it. Think how it makes you feel. Visualize getting 50 pounds for that portrait. Visualize what you will spend that money on.
Will it, will it give you a few more pencils? Will it buy a few sheets of paper? We'll give you a nice takeaway on a Friday night. Visualize what that 50 pounds is gonna give you and be comfortable with that 50 pounds. You know, as long as you're confident with whatever it is that you are asking for your art, then people will pay whatever.
You know, I, i, I still think now, goodness, actually no, I don't think now I think my work is worth 1500 pounds and people will pay for it and I'm confident with that, but I've kind of done the work. So get your 50 pounds, be comfortable with it. Then what I want you to do is take that 50 pounds and put a zero on it.
So no, it's not 50 pounds anymore, it's 500 pounds. And kind of think about what that feels like. Oh my goodness, that that feels, you know, quite uncomfortable, you know? Ooh, that's a really massive step and it is a really massive step. But kind of think about what you could do with that 500 pounds. You know,
think about all of the materials you can buy. Think about what that extra 500 pounds could do to your life every month if you were doing a commission every month and it was costing you 500 pounds. And really, really reflect on that and think, hm, do you know, actually that's a, that's a really great price. And what I want you to do is have that as your goal price for the next 12 months or 24 months or whatever.
Have in the back of your head, my, my work in 24 months is going to be 500 pounds. And just really visualize that fantastic feeling of being able to earn that much money for your beautiful art regardless of what development you're at now. Because actually you set yourself a goal for 500 pounds, your development is going to start increasing because your reticular activating system is gonna pick on upon all sorts of things.
And you are gonna want to develop your art then take that 500 pounds and put another zero on the end of it. So that is now 5,000 pounds. How does that feel? How does that feel when you think, oh my goodness, if I sold a piece for 5,000 pounds, what would that do to my life? You imagine getting 5,000 pounds a month or 10,000 pounds a month if you do two commissions or 15,000 pounds a month.
If you do three commission, can you imagine what that is going to make for your life? The changes that it's gonna make for your life, your family? And just visualize on that, you know, and visualize all of the brilliant things. Don't start, you know, self-deprecating and thinking you're not worth it or anything like that. Let's just have a little bit of fun here.
Let's just think about what that is gonna do for you. 5,000 pounds and you can keep going, you can put another zero on it. You can go up to 50,000 pounds, you know. And then what I want you to do, once you've done all of that visualizing, and this is something you can do on a regular basis just on your own,
come right back to that 50 pounds and then think about, hang on a second, 50 quid, that's not an awful lot, is it? I've just been selling my work for 5,000 there and I'm back to 50. What, what you'll find when you do these visualizing, these visualizing exercises, and you do them where it is all really positive and it's a bit of fun and it's a bit of tongue,
tongue in cheek, but you start to get these like lovely feelings coming through and it's like, oh my God, can you imagine if I was earning 5,000 pounds a month, how crazy would that be? What would, what would that do for me? And then you come back and you go, 50 quid. Yeah, no, let's put it up to a hundred.
Let's put it up to a hundred. I feel really comfortable with that now. And by doing that, it just starts to get your mind thinking. It starts to get you, you feeling how it would feel if you had these and put that with you, being proud with your work, with your developing your work, all of that kind of stuff.
And you know, pretty soon you're gonna be at that 500 mark and you're gonna be feeling confident. You might then start to do pieces that are worth 5,000. You know, who's to say what A piece of work, a piece of art's worth. If you are confident and you put, you put yourself out there and you do the work, who's to say you can't be selling your work for 5,000 pounds a pop other artist,
do it. Why can't you? So that's something that you can do on a regular basis and it really, really works. Visualizing is fantastic exercise and a brilliant tool. Georgina, how much time should I take a break from a drawing? That's entirely up to you, Georgina. Sometimes it's really good just to walk away from something, cover it up so you can't see it.
Always cover your workup, by the way. Not so you can't see it. But so that animals, toddlers, naughty children, even the teenagers can't come and add a little bit in there. The amount of people I know where they've had a cat jumped onto their piece. So every time I walk out of the room, you can see my drawing board here.
I have a piece of glassine on mine and I always put a chair in front of it so that the dogs don't jump up and scratch it. Make that a habit. But what I would say is it, it's up to you how much you want to take a break from a drawing. I tend to work four hours, four or five hours in one go.
I do get up to make a cup of tea and everything and then I, it's probably left for a 24 hours and then I come back to it. I tend to find drawing at the same time every day. Really helps me. And also my lighting is then more consistent. Camilla, how do you stick to your plan if you double yourself? Doubt yourself.
I think that means how do you stick to your plan if you doubt yourself? That is around your mindset, Camilla. And being around either people who are really positive or a community that's really positive really, really helps. If you surround yourself with people who are also doubters and who put doubts in your head, then it's, then it is far more challenging.
If you surround yourself with brilliant people who are doing amazing things, then that brushes off on you. You know, behavior, attitude and behavior. Attitude affects behavior. Behavior affects attitude. And it goes all the way around. You know, when you walk into a room and everybody's really joyous and happy, it kind of lifts you up and you're, you're like,
you know, have a lovely time. If you walk into a room and everyone is miserable, it, that affects you as well. So, you know, making sure that you are, you are really surrounded by brilliant people. That's what, that's what you need to do. Gosh, there's loads of questions in here. Keeping your paper on an easel.
I use magnets. You can see my little magnets there. Edwina is goal setting, like prioritizing what you want. Yeah, absolutely. Goal setting can be, be anything. Goal setting can be, I really want to get better at drawing for how do I do it? I am going to do a tutorial with such and such an artist to get better up for that.
That's a goal I'm going to, or I want to create a commission business in 20 20, 20 23. How am I going to do that? I am going to do a marketing course or I am going to join a, you know, a mastermind or I'm going to follow people on social media who are marketers and get some tips and everything from them. So that's the goal.
So the goal doesn't have to be like one big, huge umbrella. It can be little, little tiny things. Okay, so if one joins the academy and pays monthly, are you committed to a year's membership? No. I really want to work with people who really want to develop and I really want to work with people who are committed. So you can leave whenever you want,
basically. You can't then join again until it opens. But, you know, commitment is, is really key. I'm not saying you have to stay for the, for the, for the year if you don't want to do at all, you know, when you might join it, it's not for you. And that, you know, that happens and that's not,
not an issue at all. What I would say is, you know, it's not like Pat, it's not a jump in, jump out, jump in, jump out. It. It's, it's about commitment. But you can, you can leave at any time. Not a problem. Difference between my patron and the academy is enormous. Patron has done me really well and,
and it's got me teaching. Kind of going back to what I was saying before, the what happens with Paton is not everybody, but a lot of the time people jump in to see what it's like and then leave again. So very often you'll see people joining and leaving on the same day, which is great for that person, but it's hideous for a creator because you see people joining and then you see them leaving.
And I've seen an awful lot of people with mental health issues who have given up on Patreon. And the other thing with Patreon is the navigation is poor, really poor. You've just got one scrolling feed. There's, there's no library, there's no nothing. And the creator has to then create their own library. And unfortunately their customer service is not, not brilliant either.
So if you can't get in for any reason, you don't have your password, I can't help with any of that. If your, if your payments failed, I can't help with any of that. It's all with Patron. So I wanted to create somewhere where I could help artists who were committed to developing their work, who wanted to create, you know,
a business or, or up their hobby or whatever. I wanted to create a space where the navigation was really good and I wanted to create somewhere where I could also have a, a course as well as all of the tutorials. So what you get in the academy is when you join, you come in, you take a quiz, you take my formula for success quiz,
which is about five minutes after that you get a personalized report that tells you where you can start to focus on. I've got my coloured pencils Foundation's course, which is, it's 40 hours long. You don't, you don't have to do it. You can dip in and out, but it's an eight module, seven module course. And it goes through confidence and mindset.
It goes through color theory, it goes through values. And then you've got a series of exclusive tutorials at the end. And it's also certificated. So if you finish the tutorials, you get a certificate alongside that, you also get the video hub with all of the tutorials in the video hub Hub looks amazing. They're all, you know, all of the thumbnails are beautiful.
They're all sort of similarly designed. And then you get all of my live streams as well, which there's an awful lot in the, there is an awful lot in the academy, but if you, if you're committed and you want to develop, then it's all there for you. So the live streams, we, we draw together once a week in art club.
We have a confidence session once a month. We have a skills session once a month, which is brilliant. That includes the mastermind sessions where we all draw the same subject, where you all draw the same subjects and then we discuss it. We had a troubleshooting session this last Thursday where people just gave me their pictures and was like, oh, I'm having trouble with this,
can you help me with this? That was really great as well. All live on Zoom. Fantastic. The other brilliant thing about the academy is that I, I critique a hundred pieces a month. So 25 pieces of work are critiqued every week and it's done on a booking basis, which is a really, really fantastic service to have. And then we have just launched our first exhibition,
well it's launching on the, on the beginning of February, but we're gonna have a member's exhibition, a virtual exhibition properly curated, not just sort of like whacked up into Dropbox or whatever. It's gonna be like a virtual exhibition, which is amazing, where you can share your links and you can also sell your work as well. So that's really exciting with 2023 is,
is going to be the year of the Academy Awards as well, which is, which is brilliant. I do a, a member of the month every month where you get to kinda share and your links everything on my social media and on my website. So it's, and the community is fantastic. The most brilliant community. So helpful. Everybody's kind, everybody kind of chips in.
It's is brilliant. So if you are committed and you do want to develop, then it is a really great place to be. Okay, I'm just gonna quite look through some of these and just cuz there's an awful lot of questions here and I just want to make sure, okay, so Zoe's got a good one here. Do you have any tips on staying focused?
I find when I'm doing portrait, my brain is bouncing around the page. I find it hard concentrated on one place long enough to get the values in. So I think this is a case of if it's not broke, don't fix it. But if it's not working, then change something. And it could be that the, the style that you're drawing in at the minute where you're kind of bouncing around and everything possibly isn't working brilliantly for you.
What I would say Zoe, is if you can, I know some people find it really difficult or can't, but if you can do some visualization before you start your work, sit in a quiet space, close your eyes, visualize what it feels like to be drawing, you know, meditation really, really helps, really helps cuz it allows you to kind of go into that, that place. But visualizing how you're gonna be drawing what you're going to be doing, what you're going to be focusing on, when you kind of visualize all of those sorts of things, your brain doesn't know what's real and what's not and it thinks that it's actually doing it. So when you do do it, it becomes easier. And I think if you find it hard to concentrate, it might be that you need to take, you need to draw for shorter periods of time, you know, take regular breaks, drink lots of water, but the visualization would really, really help.
I think I, I draw in sections because I, I, I find it really hard to kind of draw layers and then layers and then layers. I like to draw in sections and bring bits up to finish. So it, look, it's exciting for me to see bits finished, but visualization I think is a, is a really great one.
Okay, so Corrin. Hi Corrin, what's the best tip for someone who is established in a, a small following to branch out with marketing? The one thing you saw incredible growth with you wish you'd, you'd have done sooner?
Oh, mailing list. I thought I was pretty good at marketing, I have to say. And I, and I'm not bad at marketing. I've come from a business background and I'm not bad at marketing. All of my content that I put out on social media is put out because I'm excited by it. Some things are put out because it's kind of a marketing thing, but the majority of my pieces are there because I'm excited about it and I want to help people. And that has really helped with my marketing just being me, basically. But the one thing that saw growth with me, mailing list, absolutely, you know, getting a mailing list out there because it's yours. You, you're not gonna suddenly get shut down by Facebook or Instagram or whatever. It's your mailing list. You can't, you can't guarantee that everybody's gonna see the mails that you sent, but it's, you know, you, you have then in front of your audience and you're putting stuff in front of them that, you know, you want them to see, which is really important. And then the other thing for the, the growth,
I think again, I think it's just being authentic and being who you are and letting people see who you are, you know, showing your face. You know, I i I still have times where I'm like, oh my God, I look absolutely, you know, like this, you know, not glamorous and not beautiful and all of that kind of stuff, but, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you look like. I hard level wear makeup or anything like that. I've had, I've have had my head on, but it, it doesn't matter. Show your face. People connect with people. And the, the other big thing when it comes to marketing is don't sell. Use the 80 20 pito rule. You know, 80% you are, you are giving value, you know, you are, you're giving value in your posts, you're with me, I'll, I'll give the colors I've used, I'll give a technique I've used. It's not about giving away your, you know, your hard fought techniques or anything like that. It's about, it's about passing it forwards. And, and, and it's a really lovely thing and I know you do that anyway, Karin. But yeah, you know, don't do the hard sell, which I don't think you do anyway, but people who are putting a link in every post, you know, here's my website, I'm a pet portrait artist. Go and go and buy a pet portrait. Here's a, you know, go buy this. People aren't interested in sell selling, they're not interested in being sold to it all. You can reverse engineer that and you can use better content that gets people intrigued and ask questions, engaging and blah blah, blah.
Okay. Cindy, you should have received a, I dunno whether it's coming out this week or it's coming out next week, but you get a whole shopping list for you with all of the paper for the Academy. Pastelmat does come in different sizes. It comes in sheets and boards and pads. And I've put all of that information in that email for you. So keep an eye out for that. Okay, let me just have a look in here.
Okay, so we've got a nice one here from Pearl "Love your podcast and I listened to some more than once and one of them you were discussing edges" Oh yes. With David Sandell lost and Found. Would you discuss this more, perhaps even have a skills club class study in this? Yes, I have recently done a dog portrait, which I was very happy with, as was the commissioner, but I think a lost found age would've been a better solution. Absolutely Paul. in fact, I'm talking to David again in the new year because I loved that session with him. He is the most fantastic artist. If, if any, if you need to go and follow an artist today, go and follow him. He's called David Sandell, S A N D E double L. He's a coloured pencils artist and an oil artist. He is phenomenal and a lovely man. And we have the most brilliant conversation about lost and found edges.
Lost edges are really important, particularly when you're drawing light coloured animals, well even dark coloured animals and a dark background, light coloured animals and a light background where you are, where the edges just disappear into the paper, you know, like it would in, in real life without having that hard edge around them. The found edges are where, where you've got a really lovely strong shadow coming down.
You know, around I've, I've used a few of those. I did a lovely field fo fall a few years ago and there's the most beautiful shadow coming down onto the neck and on the shoulder. And the field fall is like a pale pinky color and the shadow is like a really dark blue and oh my goodness, it is just like, ooh.
And bringing things like that into your work gives it that edge. It takes it to that next level. And it's something that I, I do an awful lot in my tutorial. So I talk around in my tutorials, there's a little, the little puppy. We do an awful lot of the lost edges in there and I'll also, and if anybody sends critiques in,
I'll also suggest where they could bring lost edges in, you know, or found edges and stuff. But yeah, it was a really great conversation. Okay, so we're kind of running over a little bit here. I've got loads and loads of questions. I'm just gonna find one that's okay. So I've got, I've got a couple of people here asking if I'd ever do a landscape and at the moment the answer is no.
And the reason why is because I'm not really passionate. I love landscapes, I love looking out the window and I love looking at the, I've got beautiful countryside around me. I, I'm not that passionate about drawing them and I think I have to have a passion for drawing something to be able to do it, basically. So at the moment it's not,
yeah, it, it's not something that I want to do. Okay, so I've got another one here. So a few people asking about the academy again, how it works if they sign up. So I think I've kind of been, been through this, you, you join, you do my formula for success. You've, you've got access to the whole course,
you've got access to all of the live streams and you've got access to all of the tutorials. We've got a brilliant community Facebook group as well, which is, which is fantastic. And all of the customer services through me. So if you need to get in touch with me, there's a proper support email it, it, it's not manned 24/7 because obviously I need to have some sleep.
But I have a brilliant community manager called Lucinda who helps with that as well. So, you know, if you can't get in or anything like that with, with there to help you, which is, which is awesome. So hopefully that's kind of covered, covered all of that.
Oh, here's a good one. Do I use solvents?
No, I don't. I I don't, I don't feel I need to. I think I can do everything without using solvents. I have used solvents in the past and I've known myself incredibly poorly. I won't have zest it in my house under pain of death. I would not have zested in my house. It made me so incredibly poorly. And actually the techniques that I use, I don't need to use things like solvents. I do backgrounds with coloured pencils, you know, I do fur, I do skin, all of that kind of stuff. I don't need solvents. I'm not saying you can't use solvents, but it's not something that I use or teach.
Alright. Okay, so I'm just gonna come back down here a little bit. Oh, determining size of the piece, like to use standard size frames, what size math do you use? So none of my, this is too, none of my pieces are standard sizes. They're all done bespoke. So all of my mounts bespoke, all of my framings bespoke. If you want to use standard sizes, then you can get mounts that are standard size, you know, and it's a good idea to kind of then cut your paper down. It's all Pastor Martin. The way Pastelmat works is when you cut it down into half quarter, it's not a standard size, so you kind of lose bits and pieces from it and I think that's probably why I end up going with bespoke rather than standard. But, you know, it's a, it is a good idea if you want to do that just to make sure that you write down all of those sizes and then measure your, your work. Nikki, will you definitely get a placed in the academy? Yeah. Yes, there's a place for anybody who wants to join is open for a couple of weeks. So we, we open at 12 o'clock in the afternoon on the 3rd of January. So if you sign up, you will, you will get a place.
So just learning, I can't get my pencils to blend, what am I doing wrong? This is somebody called wisp. I, I would say look at your surface that you're drawing on, look at the pencils that you are using and look at the pressure. Some pencils are, or, or some paper is very hard to blend on due to them either being not particularly good quality or having a little bit of texture to them or something like that. So it makes it a little bit harder a lot of the time. We try to put too harder pressure down right from the beginning, which then destroys the tooth. We can't then get the, the, the, the layering on the top. What I would suggest is wisp, if you haven't already, just bob onto my website, bonnysnowdonacademy.com, go onto the freebies bit in the menu and just download one of my free challenges. The I one, if you haven't done the cat eye one, do that because that shows you how to kind of blend your pencils, how to layer them and then blend them and that might just give you a little bit of a, an extra push into understanding how that works and it's completely free, you know, so that would be, that would be quite a good one. And you know, YouTube as well. I've got plenty of videos up on YouTube too. Tina, will the subject matter be animals only in my academy there are animals, I have humans. So then there are three humans that I've got.
There are art club, we've done mouth and teeth, we've done a couple of eyes. We're doing an ear in the new year, we're gonna have some more botanicals. I've got a really super Cavalier King Charles that we're going to be drawing in art club end, of end of January. And I've got some more human bits and pieces coming through as well. So there's kind of a bit, bit of everything really in there for people. Surprisingly the people who just wanted to draw animals were a lot of the people who just wanted to draw animals. And then I started to put some humans in there have really loved the humans. We've really, really honestly we've got so excited about humans and skin and shadows and I'm about to start a piece this afternoon, which I'm really excited about, which is a, which is a human. So there's a bit of a, a bit of a mix of a bit of a mix really of everything. And there's Rebecca there while I do some kittens. They're our cats in the academy as well.
I've got some little sort of snippets of two little kittens. I've got, gosh, I've got quite a few cats actually in the academy, so yeah, right, so we are a quarter of an hour over. Sorry about that. And hopefully that has given you a really, a really good, a really good idea of what's going on. Hopefully you are gonna go into 2023 with a, you know, you don't have to have a set goal and have it written down or anything like that, but you kind of got in your head what you wanna do. That exercise around the pricing is a really good one to do on a very regular basis. You know, you, and this is gonna be recorded so you can kind of come back and,and, and do that as well.
Oh, hang on a second, Karen. She's just put, please answer my question so I can decide you don't feel about the foundation course. Hang on a second, Karen. I dunno whether I saw that one. The, the foundation course is, I dunno, the, the foundation course is over, is over seven modules and it's, each module is, is probably about 10 minutes each. And I go into mindset and confidence and I give you some ideas to, to help with mindset and confidence. I go into all of the materials that we use. So it's, there's an extended module where I talk about and demo the pencils I talk about and demo the surfaces. I talk about color theory.
So we're going to color theory and we look at the values. The tutorials are animals. So we have a, a module on drawing eyes. So we have a leopard eye, we have a dog eye, we're drawing on drafting film, we're drawing on hot press paper and we're drawing on Pastelmat. We've got different fur types. So you've got smooth fur and you've got curly fur.
So oh, we've got noses. Dog noses is another one that we're doing. That's a module. And then we've also got the big German Shepherd at the end. Karen, I can see you putting in here how to blend in all of my tutorials, it's step-by-step. So it's right from the beginning, right to the end and I tell you how to do it,
what to do, and why I'm doing it, which is the most important thing. What I don't want my students to do is just become people who can just copy a tutorial. I want you to totally understand why I'm doing something, how I'm doing it, and so that you can take that on and work on your own pieces. That, that is really, really, really important. You know, so I, I tell you the how and the why when I, when I'm drawing as well and I do my tutorials, they're all done live. So I don't draw the subject and then when I'm editing it, put a little bit of voiceover in there. You get everything from me, you get all of my thought process, you get me talking about color and having a think about color. You get all of that in the, in the tutorials.
Fabulous. Right. Well thank you all over so much for joining me this afternoon. Hopefully some of you're gonna be joining me on the live draw. I've got one a week on Wednesday, I think on the 20th. It's in the evening.
We're drawing a hairs eye and then we are drawing again on New Year's Day, which I'm very excited about. All via YouTube all recorded. So if you haven't signed up, do do sign up. You can sign up in my, on the website I think. But there'll be events and everything coming through into my Facebook. So thank you all ever so much for joining me.
Oh, okay, good. Okay. I'm just, I've just seen Kim's, was it Kim's work? No, it was Pamela. You just said the most important thing to me that I need from an instructor. Why am I doing this? Yes, that is really, really important. You know, yeah, you're gonna use these colors, but why are you gonna use the colors? What are the colors gonna do? How are they going to change what you are drawing Over the top of that to me is really important.
Thank you all ever so much. Fabulous, fabulous questions. Lots of you joining me. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday and hopefully I'll see you all very soon when we're drawing the hare's eye. Alright guys. Okay, bye.
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,
