00:00:06 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 color pencil artist community, a community that changes members' lives for the better,
00:00:30 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,
00:00:50 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 cuppa and a custard cream. Let's get cracking.
00:01:19 Welcome to this week's podcast. This week I'm sharing the audio from my latest live q and a session. I share my top tips for developing your work, staying focused and motivated, and most importantly, falling in love with your drawings over and over again. I'm also asked brilliant questions, so if you want to find out a little more about coloured pencils, some of the things frustrating people, and of course the academy, tune in and listen as usual, I share openly everything I know.
00:01:49 Hello, hello everybody. Lovely to see so many of you already. We are in for a really super evening. We're gonna have a really, really lovely evening here. I'm going to be given you a load of information to start off with and,
00:02:07 and then you're gonna have a chance to ask any questions you like and I will answer them, which will be fantastic. Unusually and not unusually, but I've changed the format a little bit so that I can actually see you, which is really nice. And I can actually talk to you as well if you want to talk to me. That's brilliant. If you don't want to talk to me,
00:02:27 that's not, that's not a problem. You can, you know, you can type your questions into the chat, which is really, really nice. I'm just going to make sure that everybody can actually see the chat. Hang on a second. And so let me just look at the meeting at, hang on a second. Just make sure that we can actually,
00:02:58 everyone participants can chat to everyone and anyone directly. So do pop something in the chat if you want to say hello. Oh, there we go. There we got Stephanie, Stephanie there saying hello, which is really nice. Sometimes the chat goes off and nobody can actually, nobody can actually put anything in there. I'm like, oh gosh, we've got,
00:03:15 no, nobody wanted to say anything and it's because I've got it switched off. So, welcome everybody. It is lovely, lovely, lovely to see you all, and yes, really, really nice to see everybody. If you can just make sure that you are on mute all of the time until we start asking questions, that'd be great. It just saves me from,
00:03:36 from keeping on, clicking on mute all so that we don't get background noise or anything like that. And I'm just so happy to see so many of you here. This is going to be a q and a session. So I am going to do a quick presentation. I'm gonna go through a load of stuff and, and then we're gonna do a q and a afterwards.
00:03:55 So you can put whatever questions you want over to me. You can either put your hand up and ask the question through Zoom, or you can pop something in the chat. What I would say is if you've got a question that you want to ask in the chat, wait until we've done the presentation bit, because I'm gonna ask you to actually write the word question before you actually type your question.
00:04:17 And then I can go through and I can easily find the questions that I want to answer. So, really lovely to see so many of you here, and it's, it's very, very exciting. This is the kind of stuff that I love doing. I love sharing everything that I know and, and any question that anybody wants to ask me, I'm,
00:04:37 I'm really happy to do that. So I'm going to, I'm going to start off, I'm gonna get going quite quickly because we only have an hour and, and I do tend to run over because I do love to chat, you know, so, and I want to give you as much information as possible tonight. So I'm gonna start in a second.
00:04:58 I'm just gonna wait a coup another couple of minutes. Get like, everybody come in. I'm gonna start with a, with a presentation, and I want to talk to you about my, my three tips, basically for developing your art, your art, staying motivated, and also staying in love with your art. It's so easy to get demotivated to lose focus,
00:05:21 to fall out of love with it all. And I want you to, I want to give you some of the, the tips, and I want to go through a little bit of my journey about how I got where I am now, and then share some tips with you as well so that hopefully you can keep on, keep on drawing and keep on loving what you do.
00:05:37 And then we're going to be, then we're going to be doing some, some questions. So we've got all sorts of people come in here. We've got loads and loads of people saying hello in the chat, which is amazing. I've, I'll just pick out some here. We've got, there's, there's Linda here from Missouri, Lindy from from Ohio.
00:05:55 There's Millie from the uk hi million Wilshire. There's Vera from Austria, Diane from the UK as well in Surry, Bernie from oh, oh, hi, from hi from Ry or Di I dunno where that is. Illinois, we've got Carol there and we've got Christian from Brazil. So many people. It's so, so, so lovely to to see you all here.
00:06:22 So I'm gonna make a start. I'm gonna put everybody on mute if you can try to keep yourself on mute, if that's okay. Let me say, let me just see if I can, yeah, mute all on. Yeah, that's fine. So if we can just keep everybody on mute and then once we start asking the questions, then you can come off mute and,
00:06:46 and we can, and we can carry on. So yeah, I am going to start with the presentation. I want to talk to you about my top tips for staying motivated, staying, you know, keeping the love of your art and your development as well. So I'm going to share my screen, Just gonna share my screen here. So if you can just make sure that you keep all of your microphones muted,
00:07:13 that would be amazing. I'll just keep that there. Okay, so we are starting on this page here. Yeah, please just keep everything, keep your microphone on mute when you, when you join. I have got it set to that, but it seems to be, we seem to have the, the microphones coming back on again. So just try and keep everything muted.
00:07:41 So today we are gonna be talking about my top tips for developing your work, staying motivated and falling in love with your work time and time again. And the reason I, the reason I've chosen these as top tips that I want to talk about, because this is, this is kind of what happened for me. This is my journey. Hopefully you all kind of have an idea about when I started,
00:08:07 what I did, how I did it, and I've now got to the point now where it still feels really, really strange say in this. But I have built a a million pound company from, purely from my art. And that to me is amazing. And I really, really want to tell people about it, tell people what I did, because I want that for other people.
00:08:29 I want other people to be able to do what I've done because there's nothing remotely special about me. I'm just a normal person. I guess the special things about me are that I have self-belief in abundance, I have perseverance, and I am completely and utterly passionate about what I do and helping people. And I guess those things, when you combine them and you bring them together are,
00:08:55 are, are pretty much, you know, the reason for why I've made a success of my business. So the first thing I want to do is I want to tell you a little bit about me. Okay? You, I'm sure you will know who I am. Hopefully you know who I am. You, you've seen me on social media. I'm a I'm a single mom.
00:09:13 I have, you'll see a, a faded picture of me here. I hate having my photograph taken. And I had a photo, photo shoot done, and I absolutely loved it and I loved the photographs and it is just wonderful. And I, I've got th four dogs a cat, and I've got three children. And we haven't always had the most amazing life and we've had some pretty rubbish times.
00:09:35 However, there's always been a part of me that has, has sort of said, it's gonna be okay, everything's gonna be fine, everything's gonna be okay. And when I started my business back in 2017, I, I just had the self-belief that it, everything was gonna be okay and I would make a success of it. And that's what I kind of want to talk to you a little bit.
00:09:58 Now, before I get into some of my, the other reasons for, you know, some of my top tips. So we're gonna start with 2016. So 2016 was when I discovered my coloured pencils. My daughter gave me a coloring book and some w h smith pencils. Anybody in the UK will know w h Smith. And then anyone in the UK will know that coloring pencils from from W w H Smiths aren't going to be particularly brilliant.
00:10:24 And they weren't. But I absolutely fell in love with coloured pencils. I hadn't done any art or drawing since I left school in 1987. So it was all sort of, you know, coming back to me. It was all, you know, i i I just, I just fell in love with it, basically. Again, what I did was I prioritized,
00:10:47 and the reason I'm going through this is because these are part of my top tips that I want to talk to you about. I prioritized my drawing. I had a family. I was married, I had a full-time job, I had a horse, I had dogs, you know, I was a busy person anyway, and I prioritized time for my drawing because I realized it was something really special for me.
00:11:11 And in 2016, I started to do commission work. 2017, I became a full-time artist. Literally on the 1st of January, 2017, I became a full-time artist. I quit my job and I decided I was gonna go full-time. It was a leap of faith, but I had the belief that I could do it. It was the year that I had my work published for the first time.
00:11:32 And it was the year that I won a best in show in, in a, in a, in an exhibition. 2018 was when I ran my first workshop. So I did have a business plan right from the beginning back in 2016 when I decided I was gonna go full-time. I did have a business plan as to what I wanted to do and that I'm gonna be talking about a little bit later because that's all about,
00:11:53 about the planning side of things. So in 2018, I ran my first workshop in 2018, I had an 18 month wait list for my commissions, and that's when I actually started my wait list as well, rather than trying to get commissions in all of the time. And in 2018, I started to think about teaching online because at that point I wasn't teaching online,
00:12:13 I was running workshops face-to-face. 2019, I launched my pat channel. My pat channel was a brilliant step into teaching online. You know, it really got me out there and I did, I did really, really well with Patreon. I held regular workshops, in-person workshops and something that's really, really important to me. I had regular critiques from expert artists.
00:12:40 That was a big step for me in 2019. And I saw a massive development step when I had that critique from, from the expert artist, the expert artist who critiqued my work was Aaron Gad. I've spoken about him numerous times before. Wonderful man, incredible artist. Aaron Gad, a r o n g a d d a British artist Realism, coloured pencils.
00:13:05 If you don't follow him, you need to do, he is amazing. 2020, I employed my first team member and she's still with me, which is a good thing. Tw in 2020. I took my workshops online, obviously because of what happened with the pandemic and everything. I moved everything online. It was quite scary because I had, you know,
00:13:29 I was used to teaching in person. So teaching online was, was, was very new. It's all very well doing a, a tutorial online when you're sitting there and you're, you're pre-recording it, but when you're doing it live, all sorts of things can happen. Tech problems, all of that kind of stuff. So I took my workshops online in 2020,
00:13:45 and in 2020 I hit nearly 2000 members in Paton, which is amazing, absolutely amazing. 2021, I had my first book published. Again, just incredible, you know, a lot of hard work, but it was, it was wonderful. I employed a consultant to help me with creating my academy. So I was, I had Patron since 2019,
00:14:08 sadly, I I, I found that the, that Pat wasn't giving me or my students the experience that I wanted. There's a very strange sort of singular, oh, hang on a second, singular scroll feed, which is really, really frustrating. So the, the navigation wasn't particularly great and their customer service wasn't particularly great either. So that was frustrating.
00:14:34 So my dream was, do you know what? I'm going to create my own online platform, which was not an easy task at all. And it took a huge amount of work and thought. And, you know, I invested an awful lot into it. But I employed a consultant to help me with creating the academy. And in September, 2021, I launched my teaching platform,
00:14:56 the, the, the Bonny Snowdon Academy and my Ignite Membership Group. 2022. I employed two more team members, which has enabled me to do the things that I love to do. And this is really, really, really important when you first start out as an artist, if you're wanting to, you know, if you're wanting to branch out and you want to create a business from it,
00:15:15 it's really important to understand that you can't do everything. I'm really good at delegating. So creating a team around me has been relatively easy. Sometimes it is quite difficult to give things up, but it's meant that I can do the things that I'm really good at. I'm really good at teaching. I'm really good at drawing. I'm really good at talking.
00:15:35 I'm really good at chatting to people. So my podcast was again, an amazing thing that I started in 2022 and I get to speak to, you know, incredible people in there and I have the time to be able to do it. 2022, I, I saved up and I was able to build my, my garden studio, which is absolutely beautiful.
00:15:54 And I started writing my second book, which is, I'm still writing it, it is, it is gonna be quite a long one. 2023. My focus is all on my drawing, on my teaching. So I'm concentrating on my drawing, on my teaching. I am planning things like retreats and I am planning merchandise. So there's a journey there of sort of seven years and that kind of takes you through.
00:16:21 I planned right from the beginning, I had a dream right from the beginning. I prioritized my time so I could do the things that I really wanted to do that I was really passionate about. And I've been successful. I've, I've followed through, I've done what I said I wanted to do because I had a vision right from the start. So we're gonna go into some of these tips now,
00:16:42 and this isn't all going to be slideshow and everything like that. I'm going to n not share my screen in a second. And I'm, we're gonna be going through some questions, developing your work. So these, these are the tips that I want to talk about today. Time, time is so important. Time is so important. Know where you are headed and understand what your focus needs to be.
00:17:03 These are all of the things that I looked at when I was planning my business. Okay, so time, oh, hang on a second. There's something that's arrived and he hasn't knocked on the door. Hang on a second, we always get this, we always get these, oh no, hang on. Oh no, he's got it, he's got it.
00:17:24 I think there's a pizza that's arrived. So time, we all have 24 hours in a day. Nobody has any more and nobody has any less. We've all got 24 hours. It's up to us as to what we want to do with those 24 hours. Okay? Now, one of the biggest excuses that I give myself, and one of the biggest excuses that I hear from other people is,
00:17:48 I don't have time. I'm really sorry Bonnie. I don't have time to, to, you know, put in the hours that I need to develop my drawings. I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to do that. And it's an excuse that I have used in the past and I have to really stop myself from saying I'm really sorry I don't have time.
00:18:06 Actually, I have all of the time in the world for what I want to prioritize. And for me, prioritizing my art was exactly where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. So what did I do? I stopped watching television in my lounge. And I, if I wanted to watch a film, I would watch it whilst I was drawing I,
00:18:30 oh, hang on a second. Mute everybody again. Yeah, please do try and keep yourself muted. I, it gets really frustrating with Zoom cuz you tell it, tell it all to be Zoom muted and then it, and then it doesn't. Yes. So I, I prioritized my drawing time. I made my drawing time really, really important.
00:18:50 I got up a little bit earlier, which, you know, sometimes is, is hard, sometimes is a little bit easier. I made sure that I had time and I'd scheduled my time for doing my drawing, and that was really important. If I hadn't have done that, I would not have developed and I would not be where I am today.
00:19:08 I'm not saying everybody wants to be, and, you know, running a, a business and everything like that, but if you want to develop your work, you have to put the time in. And if you don't put the time in, you're not going to develop your work. So it's a priority if you want it to be a priority. Some people manage to cram more into their 24 hours than others.
00:19:26 And why is that? A lot of the time it's because of their time management. They are really, really good at managing their own time. You know, they, they know how to, they know not to multitask. I was gonna do a quick, a quick exercise, which I'm gonna hold back on because I, I was thinking it might get a little bit complicated.
00:19:47 I always used to think that multitasking was a really great skill to have. I now understand that actually multitasking is not, not actually a thing. It doesn't actually work if you try and do multiple things all at the same time, it starts to get really complicated and actually it takes you far longer to do the things when you're try and do them all at the same time.
00:20:07 The energy that you put into something and then you're trying to, you go from email to, you know, doing a tutorial back to sorting a message out, back to doing something else. It's, you know, it, it really, really does take away from the, the, the focus that you're trying to, to bring into whatever it is that you're doing.
00:20:27 So the people who do manage to get more done generally are really good at managing their time, not multitasking, but actually focusing on the task in front of them. Getting that done and then moving on to the next, prioritizing your needs is really, really important. I am, I am, I've been dreadful in the past for this. I prioritize everybody else's needs ahead of my own.
00:20:49 And we all, we all do this, but you know, our needs come bottom of the pile. So we're there, we want to do our drawing, but you know, so-and-so wants to go out here. So-and-so wants to go out there. I've gotta get the Washington, I've gotta make the tea, I've gotta sort the dogs out, I've gotta go to work.
00:21:09 I, you know, gotta do the shopping, gotta do the garden, gotta mow the lawn. All of these things obviously are important, but some of them can actually wait. Some of them can can be put to one side. Some of them can be delegated to somebody else because doing things that bring you joy and make you happy enables you to have a better relationship with everybody around you.
00:21:34 You know, if you are always doing other things for other people, you are gonna find that your, your joy disappears and you, you start to become resentful and, and that's really not, not a lovely thing to happen. So really prioritizing your needs. If you want to learn to draw, if you want to develop your drawing, you find time to do that,
00:21:56 and you prioritize what you want to do and other stuff can stop. I stopped ironing, you know, I used to iron for four hours on a Sunday afternoon. I mean, warranted. I listened to to, to radio too, and it's quite nice on a Sunday afternoon, but four hours of ironing sheets and, you know, vests and socks and why was I doing that?
00:22:20 So I stopped ironing and I got myself back four hours on a Sunday afternoon. You know, people, people can live in a bit of a crumple shirt or you can just hang them nicely and they, you know, there's certain things that we tend to do that actually don't really, really need doing. And because again, we're prioritizing other people's needs in front of ours.
00:22:40 So look at your time, really look at your day, your week, your month. Where can you find time to be able to put that precious schedule in for doing what you want to do? And that hopefully that is to develop your, your drawing. So time is really, really important. Know where you are headed. So what is the vision?
00:23:01 What vision have you got for your, you know, your art, your creativity? Is it, you know, a a hobby? You just want to have a lovely hobby where you sit down and you, and you draw. And that's exactly where I started. It was a hobby, and then it soon became something much, much bigger than that.
00:23:15 But I had the vision right from the beginning, you know, I knew what I wanted to do so I could then pick up, up on, on opportunities and work towards where I wanted to be. So have a vision and then decide on what your vision actually is. You know, write it down, say it out loud. As soon as you say something out loud,
00:23:34 you get it down on paper, it becomes, it becomes something that's, that's tangible and it becomes something that's real. So, you know, if you've got dreams of hyper realism or dreams of something a little bit more painfully, do you, you dream of quitting your job, becoming a full-time artist? Do you have dreams of teaching online? These are all of the things that I had when,
00:23:51 back in 2016 when I first started drawing hyper realism. I, I don't really have a dream of hyper realism. I admire it, but it's not really something I want to do. J i I I tell people I'm lazy all of the time and I really am lazy. I know a few people will testify to that, but, you know, hyper realism takes that extra little bit of concentration and,
00:24:14 you know, r really getting all of that detail and everything. My work, I want to be real. I want it to look real, but I'm not looking for that like photo realism. That was, that was always something that I, I looked at when I first drew my first picture. I was very proud of it. I think, you know,
00:24:33 a lot of you have seen that piece. And then I realized that I wanted to push that and I wanted to make it something else. So I, I, I had a vision in my head as to what I wanted my drawings to look like, and that's what I went towards. That's what I, I I kind of focused on a dream of quitting my job to begin with.
00:24:51 I didn't really, it was a hobby. I didn't think right at the beginning. I didn't think that I could make a living from, from art, and I was incredibly wrong, you know? But again, when I did decide that I was gonna be a full-time artist, I had my business plan and I did have dreams of teaching online. So I had all I knew where I was going right from the beginning,
00:25:12 I knew where I was going. And if you know where you are headed, you can make a plan of action. And this is so important. Now, I am a chaotic person. I'm not a very organized person at all. I, I live in chaos. I've got chaos everywhere. People ask me how I manage to keep my drawing paper so clean.
00:25:31 I use Pastelmat an awful lot, white Pastelmat. And people go, how do you manage to keep it so clean? And I'm like, I have no idea because everywhere I am is dust. I've got dogs, I've got, I've got rugs in here. I've just got a new sheep skin rug for the dogs. I've got dust everywhere. I have no idea how I keep it clean chaos everywhere.
00:25:50 But on my drawing board, it's calm, it's clean. I only have one piece on there. It's set out how I want it to be set out. I knew where I was headed from 2016. I had the vision and I stayed with that vision. And that is really, really, really important. No, your focus, again, part of the the,
00:26:13 the planning and the vision. Where do you need to focus your attention? If you are developing your drawing, what is it in your drawing that you need to develop? Okay, so you look at your drawing, you think, you know what, I'm brilliant at eyes. And I really want you to say, I am brilliant at, I am really good at drawing.
00:26:30 I am really good at this. Not all God. Oh, well, I think, oh, well, I could have done better there. No, we want the self-belief, we want the, we don't want the big headedness. We want the self-belief and we want the confidence to come through. So where do, do you really need to focus your attention?
00:26:44 Take your latest drawing, look at what you've done really, really well, and go, do you know what? I've done that really well. I love how I do eyes. And I think I get the, the glassiness and the realism and everything like that. I'm really great at eyes. And then you look at the parts of your drawing where you think,
00:26:59 oh, do you know, actually I could do with a little bit of help developing this kind of fur. It could be long fur, it could be short fur, it could be curly fur. Then you look at what comes easily. What, what, what do you find that's relatively easy for you to do? You know, I now find it really easy to do eyes.
00:27:18 I've done so, so many thousands of eyes. I find it really easy to do eyes. What do I find challenging? For me? I find smooth subjects quite challenging. You know, the, the blending, particularly on a smoother surface, I find that quite challenging. And then we make the plan of action. And, and a lot of the time it's like,
00:27:41 well, all you need to do is practice. And the only way to get better at something is to practice, right? And yes it is, but you can practice till the cows come home and practice all of the wrong things or practice doing the same thing over and over again. And you're not going to actually develop, you've got to practice the right things to get better.
00:28:03 So if you are finding curly fur, tricky practice doing curly fur, but, but do your research. Go and look on, you know, YouTube, there are some amazing tutorials on YouTube from, you know, so many different artists. There's so many different ways of doing things. Go and have a look at how they're doing it. You know,
00:28:25 join a fantastic group. I've got, I've got three fantastic groups, you know, you don't have to join mine, but join a fantastic group where you can ask a question and somebody who's more experienced will come up and they will help you and they will show you what to do. Buy a tutorial, subscribe to, you know, one of the amazing magazines that you can subscribe to.
00:28:44 Join a, a patron or, or join my academy. That, that would be the best thing. Join my academy and I'll teach you how to draw girly fur. But find something that's going to help you find, you know, either a YouTube or tutorial or whatever, and find something that is going to help you with this particular challenge that you've got.
00:29:03 And then you'll know what you need to practice to get it right. Staying motivated is really, really key. Particularly if you decide that you want to, you know, go into business or that you just want to enjoy a hobby. Staying motivated is, is important. Whatever you want to do. And these are some of my tips, okay? To stay motivated,
00:29:25 make a space of your own, if you can. When I first started, I drew at my kitchen table and I had to clear everything away every night. And it came, it did become a little bit frustrating for those, the rest of the family and for me as well, because I had to clear everything away. But if you can make a space of your own,
00:29:41 it becomes like a little sanctuary. It becomes this really lovely space where you can go and you can, you know, you can do your drawing and you can, you know, you can have all of your pencils around you, you can have your candles, you can have whatever, but it's a space of your own. Doesn't have to be a massive room or a studio or anything.
00:29:58 Just a, a little space where you can keep your workout, challenge yourself, you know, look at something and go, don't look at a, a photograph and go, I'll never be able to do that. If you see a photo and it really makes your heart sing, use it, draw it, give it a go. Challenge yourself, you know,
00:30:16 to, to push yourself, to develop, to get better. You know, don't look at something like, oh, I could never do that. Never, ever put that negativity into your head. Look at a photograph and go, that, that looks challenging, but I'm gonna give it a go draw what you love. This is why none of my tutorials are of pairs.
00:30:39 I I don't love drawing pairs and I don't want to teach people to draw pears. I wanna teach people to draw animals, humans, flowers. There is definitely a place for, for drawing pairs. And it's, you know, there is quite a, it's quite good for kind of understanding about light and shade and all of that kind of thing, but I don't wanna teach people how to,
00:30:59 I just wouldn't love drawing a pair. So you won't find any pairs just yet in my tutorials. Try not to procrastinate. Oh my goodness. Honestly, procrastination is just the absolute thief of everything. And we all do it. We all procrastinate, and you can sort of be sitting there and suddenly all of a sudden you think, oh, I'm procrastinating here.
00:31:19 I I I do it when I'm teaching. You know, I'll waffle on about something else because I don't want to get onto this. But if you find yourself doing everything under the sun other than drawing, ask yourself why. What is it that is stopping you from sitting at your drawing board or your table or your easel or wherever? What is it that's stopping you from doing it?
00:31:38 It could be fear of anything. It could be fear of success, it could be fear of failure. But ask yourself why? Because that's a really, really important question to have with yourself. Why am I not going and doing my drawing? And again, like I said before, find a community you can ask questions and get support from that is a really amazing way of staying motivated.
00:31:59 You know, having that accountability with somebody else. You know, oh, I'm drawing this, oh, I'm drawing the same thing. Or, you know, let's have a conversation together. How are you getting on blah, blah, blah. A community is gonna really build you up and keep you built up and keep you motivated and fall in love with your work.
00:32:18 Oh my goodness, I get so sad when I see, I saw another artist on Facebook, she'd ripped her work up and put it in the bin and it made me so sad. I have never ever, ever once ripped a piece of work off my drawing board and thrown it in the bin. Not once. I've never lost, I've never lost patience or got angry with any,
00:32:39 I've never, never, every single piece I do is a learning curve for me, even if it's absolute rubbish. And I have produced some absolutely rubbish pieces. You know, even if I start a piece and I go, Hmm, actually do you know this isn't working? I'm going to take it off and I'm gonna start again. I don't put it in the bin ever.
00:33:00 It goes in my drawer. And every now and again, I will take it out and I will have a look at it and they'll go, do you know what? That was a really great decision to restart that piece. And I really like the fact that I've still got it here to reflect on and go back to mindset is absolutely key. When you're working on your skill levels,
00:33:17 mindset is the thing that is going to make or break you. And it is something that you can change. It does take work. I I tend to have a very positive outlook on everything really. And I'm lucky in that respect. You know, I know not everybody is built like me. I, I have some terrible traits, but mindset for main positivity is,
00:33:40 is is pretty good. Trying to work on your mindset is really important for working on your skill levels. Take the time to admire what you've done. Take the time to look at what you've done. I, I know, I dunno whether she's here today, but there's wonderful lala she's in, she's in my membership, and she, she does her own teaching and she does,
00:34:05 and she came on my retreat last year and she and I were literally crying over her drawing that she'd done because it was so utterly beautiful. That's what I want you to do. I want you to look at your piece and I want you to cry because it's so beautiful, you know? And, and it's your, your little moment where you look at it and you go,
00:34:32 oh, my, have I really done that? Have I that is just, and, and that it gives you goosebumps. It makes you feel absolutely incredible, you know, and I want you to practice doing that because it is so, so important to love your work. Remind yourself of the skills that you need, that you need to do what you're actually doing,
00:34:53 okay? And then remind yourself that you've actually got those skills, even when you're starting out. You know, I've got the skills for layering. Oh my goodness, I can create a cat's eye, you know? Oh gosh, you know, I, I've managed to mix these colors together. I've managed to blend. Remind yourself of the skills. Coloured pencil is hard.
00:35:12 It's a hard medium, you know? And as soon as you start drawing, remind yourself about how amazingly you are doing and how brilliant your, your work is. And finally be in total awe of the work that you're doing right from the beginning. You know, gasp, I've, I've written this down, gasp, cry, fall in love with your work because if you love your work and you are so,
00:35:39 so, so proud of it, all of that pride and that energy and that wonderfulness that you, you have in your body is going to be put into everything that you do. When you, when you put stuff onto social media, it's gonna come out in your words, whether you like it or not. It is going to come out in your words.
00:35:58 If you are, you know, if you post and you're not happy with your work, it's gonna come out in your words. So be happy with your work. Love it, love what you do. Because if you love what you do, you can do the most incredible, incredible things. Everything that I've talked about in this last however long. Oh gosh,
00:36:18 half an hour. God, I do waffle on, don't I? But everything that I've talked about is what I have done over the last seven years. And I, I now have a business that is giving me the most fantastic quality of life. And, and I want that for everybody. I want that for everybody. So my final slide basically is,
00:36:36 I'm just giving you a heads up. I've got two live events coming up this next Sunday and the Sunday after, if you haven't signed up due, because we're not doing a speed drawing this time. Yay. We're not doing a speed drawing, we're doing a slow one. We're gonna be working on Pastelmat. I'm gonna be drawing at the I on this coming Sunday.
00:36:57 And then using the same photograph the following Sunday, we're gonna be drawing that ear. So we're gonna be drawing an eye, and then we're gonna be drawing fur. It's a, a beautiful dog and I've given you the whole reference photo, the whole liner, and then even more excitingly, the rest of the tutorial is going to be available in the academy.
00:37:15 So you can either do it on your own, finish it on your own, or you can finish it in the academy if you like. And the academy opens for new members on the 3rd of April. So if you're not on the wait list and you do wanna join me, get on the wait list because you'll get the invites coming through then. So I'm now going to stop sharing.
00:37:32 You'll be pleased to hear. I'm gonna come and have a look at all of your lovely places, and I'm going to ask anybody who wants me to answer any questions. Now, you can either raise your hand, there's a little box down at the bottom that says reactions. You can click on that. And there's a little button that says raise hand.
00:37:50 So if you want to ask a question personally, click on that and I'll come to you and I'll, and I'll, and I'll ask you to ask your question. If you want to ask a question in the chat, please do so, but add the word question in front of it, okay? So that I can go through those and I can,
00:38:11 I can read them and I can answer you. So I'm gonna come, first of all to Anne there. I'm gonna ask you to un unmute Anne to ask your question. You there Anne and Scott, you got your hand up? No. Yep. You there, right? I'm gonna come to Sharon instead. Sharon Crawford? No, Sharon. Oh gosh,
00:38:38 they've all got hands up, but they're not, they're not unmuting. Okay, so I'm gonna come to Anne. Anne, can everybody Yes, yes. Can you hear me? Do, do you want to unmute? You'll need to unmute. Oh, I'm not sure this is gonna work very well. Oh, here we go. I'm unmuted now.
00:39:03 There we go. Here we go. Sorry, did I have to put something somewhere like question? I don't remember what you said just now. No, you can ask a question here. Well, the trouble is I'll be in a remote area before the academy opened, but I do want to draw. I will be in Scotland in the outdoor HIEs.
00:39:23 Oh, how nice. My question is, I won't have wifi or a signal to do your tutorials in the meantime. What can I do to be able to draw anyway? What can I use? Can I use your book? Can I use, what can I do? Absolutely. Absolutely. You can use my book. I also have the draw alongs that are on YouTube,
00:39:44 which I've got all of the links and everything. So you could download them beforehand. Yeah, so you could download those, you can download the reference links, all of that kind of stuff. Oh, hang on a second. Use that, Download the YouTube video as well. Yes, you can. All right, that's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah,
00:40:05 you can download the YouTube video too. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, so you could do that. The other thing as well is that I have got, I have got some PDF downloads, so if you were desperate to, you wanted to draw something, I've got quite a few PDF downloads that you can, you can use as well. Recommend for a beginner I Out of those PDFs.
00:40:25 So I would recommend the Bernard. Bernard, he's a little terrier. Is a terrier. A little a terrier. Okay. So I would recommend that, and I would recommend having a look on YouTube and, and down anything that you find there, you should be able to download the, the video. Thank you very Much. No problem. Very helpful.
00:40:48 Thank You. Thank you. Can I interrupt for a second? Oh, hi Hilda. Yes. Just to say to Ann that there may not be internet connection where she is in Louis or Harris or wherever she is now to HIEs, but there will definitely be internet connection on the island. If she goes somewhere to somewhere else, it will be, it'll be available in a library or somewhere.
00:41:10 Oh, thank you Hilda. She knows. So that's a good tip. Good tip. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you. Right. Okay. So I'm gonna come to, now, I haven't got a name here. It just says iPad. Yes. That's you. Yes. Yeah. Waving. Do you want to unmute? Yeah, where Is,
00:41:32 there we go. Yeah, Can You hear me? I can hear you, yeah. Okay, thank you. Could you give some suggestions about a good light source? I have a lot of issues with drawing and getting good light. Yes, definitely. So I would steer clear of any spotlights. So I've got spotlights in my ceiling and I cannot use them because they create the most awful shadows,
00:41:58 terrible shadows. So my suggestion is to use daylight lamps if you can. I have floor standing ones and they're, the ones that I use are photography soft boxes. So they're quite, they're they, they stand on the floor and they're quite big. They're quite big, but they're brilliant because they diffuse the light and you don't get any of the horrible shadows.
00:42:22 They'd last for ages. The lights last ages and they're, they're not overly expensive. And you can get little desk lamps. You can get lamps that kind of clip onto your table or your drawing board. I would definitely go for the daylight lamps. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you. You know, because that, yeah, you don't want eye strain or anything at anything.
00:42:42 How do I get, yeah, Yeah. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Okay, so I'm gonna come to Tammy. Hi, can you unmute? Yeah, sorry about that. Hi. That's alright. Hi. Hi. I have a question. So I would like to join your Ignite group. Would I then also have access to the Patreon?
00:43:08 And I'm sorry if you already covered this, I missed the first 10, 15 minutes, but I just wanted to know if the Ignite Group also included your Patreon channel videos? Yes. Task videos. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Ignite has every single video that Patreon has. Okay. And then a whole load more. And it's also in a much easier way to navigate.
00:43:39 It's all, I've chosen a, a platform to put all my videos on that is searchable. So you can search with a word or a phrase and it actually picks up parts of videos for you. So you know, it'll search through the video, which is amazing. It is absolutely amazing. And they're all put into playlists, so it's very, very easy to navigate.
00:44:00 So you get all of my back, back catalog of, of videos, including everything that was, that's on Patreon. You get a whole lot more. And then you also get my, my course as well, the, the foundation's course. So there's a huge, huge, huge amount of, of information there, you know, but it's really,
00:44:18 really nicely laid out. Okay, cool. By the way, I'm the one that did the, the, the horse with all the likes on your Facebook page and now it's cuz of your videos. Oh, amazing. Brilliant. Thanks Tommy. Okay, so I'm gonna come to Charlotte. Charlotte Compton. Hi, can you Hear me? Hi, I can indeed.
00:44:44 Hi. So I've been drawing for the last 14, 15 years for mainly mental health reasons. Is it wrong to be doing this because of accountability? Like do you, how do I explain it? Like weekly, like drawing along and stuff like that. You also had said you had business sort of to actually like help start, what's that sort of part of the program as well as your like tutorials and stuff?
00:45:17 I was trying to understand what sort of like helping make a business area if it was. Okay. Okay. So basically wh why would you, why would you join and what would you get? Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Rather than just being an artist, like how can it help me develop and, you know, get to the next level.
00:45:38 Yeah. Okay. And is that something that you want to do? Do you want to make start making a business? I do, yeah, I do. Yeah. I've got an intense fear of it, so I was kind of hoping that this might Yeah. Cross that. Yeah, I completely get that. So what my ultimate aim in the academy is to help people develop their color pencil work.
00:46:01 But a big part of what I do is to help people with confidence and mindset because that, that to me, you know, the Ignite membership is all about teaching color pencil, but actually it is really not, is more about helping people become more confident in themselves and create, oh, I've got a moth now. Oh it's landed on my glasses.
00:46:25 Hang on. It's, yeah, it's more about creating that co helping people become more confident. So what you get in the, in the membership is you get an awful lot of things around confidence. So every single one of my tutorials will have something to help build confidence. So I go a little bit into the psychology of drawing, you know, why do we have a fear of starting,
00:46:53 why do we, why are we scared about picking colors? You know, what happens if we go wrong? What's going through your brain when, when we're going wrong? What, what are the levels of, I go through the levels of competency, you know, when we first start out. And then, and it's kind of like a sliding scale.
00:47:08 You get better and then you drop down again. And why, when you get to a certain level, do you suddenly feel like you can't draw anymore? You know? And it's, and and I go into all of that throughout my tutorials as well as teaching you how, you know, we're gonna put this color here and we're gonna put that color there.
00:47:22 I also talk about that every month we have a confidence session where I go through all sorts of different areas of helping to build your mindset, helping to build your confidence from things like building a mood board and why a mood board's really important to things like creating a, we did the right, the jelly baby tree, which is kind of where you, you,
00:47:46 you, you decide where you are now and where you want to be and what changes you want to make. So there's an awful lot of coaching element in my teaching as well. And you get the whole back catalog of all of those confidence sessions that you can go through. There's personality, we did a personality type session, the business drop-in, again,
00:48:03 I do each month and we talk about different elements of running an art business. And it's not necessarily for people who are really, you know, set on building a, a strict business. It could be that you just want to pick up on commissions that you want to Confidence. Yeah. It's, it's just the stage from I do this amazing work that I,
00:48:24 I'm really proud of, but I can't share it with anyone. Right. It's the sta that confidence of actually sharing it with someone, let alone someone paying you Yes. To do it. Yes. And I guess it's that kind of barrier that I was hoping It is. If that's covered, that would be brilliant. A absolutely, absolutely it is.
00:48:42 And what's wonderful as well is that the community are so incredible. You'll find people in, in the community who have been exactly where you are and have now made so many different changes that, that everything is completely different. You know, I've had members who couldn't show their face on Zoom, they couldn't talk. And then last year they joined me in one of these sessions and came on live and talked about their experience.
00:49:07 That to me is, is incredible. That's brilliant. That's, that's work that you need to put in. But if you've got the tools to be able to do that, that's, that's when things, things gonna happen. Brilliant. Thank you. Awesome. Lovely question. Thank you Charlotte. Carol, with your hand up there, I am gonna come to the,
00:49:23 the, the chat as well. I'm not a a pencil artist that paint, but I'm not skilled in pencil. How would you know where to, to start? Are there any subjects you'd avoid? Is there something to, to go for that would give you confidence to, to start out, I've looked at the kind of pencils and things that you use in the paper.
00:49:47 Yeah. But do different animals create different challenges? Is this something you, you know, avoid to start off with so it doesn't put you off? So personally, I'm a jump in at the deep end kind of a girl. So my, honestly, my, my suggestion is if you have a passion for a certain subject, go for that. I've got,
00:50:16 if you want to, I've got lots and lots of free tutorials that you can, you can download and you can do drawing like a cat size. So getting, just getting used to the pencils and how they work is, is really, really, is really important. Just and having the confidence to be able to put the pencils down, mix the colors,
00:50:35 all of that kind of stuff. So I have those, I have those that are gonna be, that will be helpful for you. And, and I, I honestly think choose something, if you're passionate about a certain animal or a certain flower or whatever, that's always going to motivate you and it's always going to keep that, that focus and that motivation up.
00:50:56 So I would, that's what I would do. I would choose something that, that excites you. I, I look at your work and it's so detailed compared to the things that I would draw. It's how to get from that to that. So to get from that, you've seen my initial, you've seen my, my first, my first drawing,
00:51:14 which wasn't detailed at all. So to get from that to, to where I am now is asking questions, is putting the practice in, is finding what I want it to look like and making the changes and practicing those changes and techniques and everything. So, is, Is there, sorry. No, no, no. Is there a, is there one place that you always start from?
00:51:39 I always start with eyes. Eyes, right? I always start with eyes, you know, if you can get used to drawing eyes, you've got layering, you've got color mixing, you've got details, you've got values, got everything in an Eye, right? And then, and then everything else will come from There. Thank you very much. Thank You.
00:51:57 No problem. Thank you Carol. Thank you. Right. I'm just gonna come through into the chat here. Oh gosh, this, let's have a look, right? So let me see where it says question. It's the problem with the chat. You have to go through everything. Okay. All right. I'm just gonna pick up the ones that say that say question in front of them.
00:52:25 Oh, that, that's quite good one. It hasn't got question in front of it, but I'm gonna talk it anyway. Oh gosh. Thanks D putting grapes. Yes. That was a real ne nemesis of mine trying to draw grapes. Dorothy, how to keep motivating a drawing when it goes on for more than 15 hours. I, I would say that the majority of my drawings go on for more than 15 hours.
00:52:44 When I first started drawing, I would get really into and enjoy drawing the features and the eyes and all of those gorgeous little details. And then I'd finish cuz I, I drew animals, I'd finish drawing the face and I'd get down to sort of like the, the neck area and, and I would rush it and it would just be rushed and I'd be like,
00:53:03 oh gosh, let's just, because my mind was on the next piece so I'd have a another piece in mind for my next drawing. So what I now do is I have taught myself to love every single part of my drawing and I've taught myself to fall in love with the process of drawing. Not the outcome, not the finished piece. I love the finished piece,
00:53:23 but I love the process. So for me, it doesn't matter how long a piece takes, I don't get bored with it. I love every single tiny part of it. And that is something that I can, I've worked on. And it is definitely something that you can change. You know, you might be sitting there thinking, well, you know,
00:53:42 how can I love drawing like a horse's neck? And it's taking me out forever and ever. The process of laying down pencil, of mixing pencil, of getting completely absorbed in just that, that, that wonderful coloring is amazing because then you get into the flow and you disappear and all of your worries and all of everyday life disappears. And that's what I love about color pencil and why I love that.
00:54:06 It's a really, really slow process. Okay. Okay. So somebody, somebody here has, has just asked if they're going to get all of the supplies and everything for enrolling. Absolutely. So if you have joined the wait list, you will already have received an email with all of the supplies that, that you're gonna need. However, please don't think that you have to buy all of the pencils and all of the paper.
00:54:33 You really, really don't. If you've already got pencils, I would, I would really urge you to use what you have. Oh gosh. This little mustang flying all over the place. If you've got, if you've got pencils, then use what you have. Okay. Everybody wants all of the pencils and, and that's absolutely fine. But if,
00:54:57 you know, if you're on a strict budget, please don't worry about having everything. But those are, that will have been emailed to you and we'll email it out again. Okay, so Annemarie here, I can't draw at all. I can only go off a trace. Annemarie, absolutely nothing wrong with that. I supply all of the line arts,
00:55:17 everything like that, many, many artists trace. Many artists like me can freehand as well. We choose to trace because it just makes the starting process that little bit quicker. Don't let anybody tell you you can't draw because you have to trace because the, the, there's a real skill, is a skill in going into freehand. There's a real skill in actually filling in that freehand,
00:55:39 you know, so you need to understand all about values and all of that kind of thing. Okay. So the, the, the, the days and times that I do my live drawings, so art club is always on a Tuesday at one o'clock and we draw for two hours. The confidence session is on a Wednesday evening, once a month on a Wednesday evening from 7:00 PM The business drop-in is on a Thursday,
00:56:08 once a month from 2:00 PM And then we have a skills club as well, which is, again, once a month on a Thursday at 2:00 PM I also do a q and a on a Monday at 2:00 PM but we're gonna be doing some in the evening as well. Okay. So Bonnie. Oh yes. Can I jump in here? Of course you can.
00:56:29 I'm 68 and I've got MSN in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, I've lost the use of my right hand, which was my dominant hand. Yeah. But I'm having problems transferring the pictures that I want to do, like in a line drawing onto the eventually finished piece. Right. Could you make any recommendations for that? So I think the easiest way to do it is to pr is to print out your line drawing Right.
00:57:07 And then cover the back in either a soft pencil or a pastel. I don't really tend to use pastel because I, I am allergic to it. Right. But I do have, I do have a Karen dash pencil that I use occasionally, and I cover the back, just scribble over it, scribble over it, and then you would trace over the top,
00:57:26 you put the, you put the pastel next to your surface that you're gonna be working on. Right. Trace over the top or get somebody else to trace over the top. Okay. Well I'll hopefully be joining you when I can get my left hand going with the pencils. Oh, bless you. Well, Bonnie, yeah, you know, I,
00:57:46 I really like the film. She could use the film by putting her, her picture right behind the film. You are. And going that way. And she won't have to transfer. That would be great for Her. You are so right, Emma. That is a brilliant suggestion. So, drafting film, which is semi opaque. Okay. Could print your liner out,
00:58:07 put it behind it, and you can see it through the film and then you can just start drawing. Super. Thank you Very much. Amazing. Amazing. Emma, thank you so much for that. Awesome. Right. I'm gonna come back up here to now then. Oh, I've got Maryanne there. Yeah. Hello, Bonnie from the Netherlands.
00:58:31 Hi. Can you hear Me? I can, Yeah. Oh, very good. It's first time I'm watching a q and a like this. It just started two weeks ago with the dog nose now still trying to get the cat's eye and a little bit of fur around it. Well that's, that's a hill on wheels, I would say the fur.
00:58:51 But I have a question when I would join you, like, like now I'm tr Yeah, I have tricks with the fur. When do I get a good critic from you? Can I get that like one-on-one? Because in the past when I was on the course, I found it much easier when people could really talk to you and say how you should do it.
00:59:16 Yes. What can I expect when I join? Because I think it's a little bit expensive for my taste. So yeah. Is it worth it? Okay. Yes, it's definitely worth it. Yeah. That's a logical answer. There We go. You've your answer onto the next No. So yeah, is, is definitely, so I critique a hundred pieces of my students work a month.
00:59:44 So 25 pieces a week, which I think is more than any other artist does. And the reason I do that is because I'm, I really am passionate about people developing their work. Now, obviously it means when we do it on a booking system, so an email comes out and we use time zones. So an email comes out on a different time zone every week.
01:00:04 So everybody get, does get a chance to be able to book a critique in. I'm always available on the, on the membership group. So if you were to post your picture in the membership group and you wanted some help, I will always come and help. And you'll also get members coming and helping as well. So a critique, if you were to get a personalized critique,
01:00:27 it would be between probably five and probably about five to eight minutes. And what I do is I, you send your picture, you send your reference photo, you give me any notes that might be relevant that you, you're maybe challenging this part's challenging or that part's challenging or whatever. I then put them up on my screen and I record my screen and I talk you through what I think you've done really well.
01:00:52 So I'll always, always congratulate you on what you've done well. Cause that's incredibly important. And then I will talk you through what you could do to improve and where you can, what changes you need to make to develop even further. And that's what, that's what one of my critiques looks like. I also have a critique of the week. So I'll pick out one of the,
01:01:14 the 25 each week and it will be a critique of the week. And the everybody's critique is, is included in one video and that's then posted in the hub. And you'll be able to find your, your critique in there. I urge people to watch other people's critiques as well because you get so much information from them, so much Information. Yeah,
01:01:35 I understand. But still the question about the, the the times you mentioned earlier, earlier that you are teaching us or showing us how to do things. It was on a Monday and 1:00 PM You said when I miss that, can I, I later watch it back from, from internet or Yeah, yeah, Yeah. So every live stream that I do is recorded.
01:02:00 Yeah. It's uploaded the same day. So if you miss it, you can then just go into the video hub and rewatch it. Yeah. And still get critiques on that piece or on that part from you if I wanted it to. Yes, you can either book in a critique and have like a proper structured critique or you can post it in the group tag me and,
01:02:20 and I will help. Yes, yes. Okay. Well thank you. No problem. And to give you a bit of an idea about, so I had, I, I have critiques done. It costs me 400 pounds to have three pieces critiqued. Just, just to give you an idea of how much it costs to have, you know, if you were to go privately to have a critique,
01:02:40 then so 30 pounds is pretty good, I would say. So I make all my work post Get it to you. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks everyone.
01:02:51 Yeah, thank you.
01:02:52 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,
01:03:12 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,
01:03:32 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.
01:03:56 Til next time.
