From Corporate Stress to Creative Success with Bonny Snowdon

How coloured pencils changed Bonny's life.

World-renowned artist and teacher Bonny Snowdon shares how a stressful period in her life and a gift of coloured pencils from her daughter led to a profound creative awakening that helped her manage anxiety and navigate personal challenges.

We explore Bonny’s horse-mad childhood in North Yorkshire, her early experiences in the advertising and graphic design industries, a challenging '360' management review and her transition into executive coaching. Bonny discusses the 'leap of faith' required to turn her artistic passion into a thriving business, including the launch of the Bonny Snowdon Academy.

We discuss the importance of self-belief, Bonny offers insight into her restorative daily rituals involving journalling and sketching, and provides encouraging advice for anyone looking to start their own creative journey.

In this episode:

• The role of creativity in Bonny’s childhood and her early love of horses.
• Navigating the shift from traditional graphic design to managerial roles.
• How coloured pencils provided a meditative escape during difficult times.
• The transition from executive coach to full-time professional artist.
• Building a successful creative membership and online academy.
• The importance of daily journalling and sketching for mental wellbeing.
• Practical advice for beginners: starting small and embracing the learning curve – don't be afraid to produce 'rubbish' work while you learn.

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Transcript

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Bonny Snowdon: 1:01

And I came out and they were just like, we need to talk to you about your 360. Basically, everybody thinks you're really, really terrible. And I was like, oh, my God. What? I just was not a good leader. And I was absolutely hooked. I couldn't believe the change in what was going on in my head when I picked up a pencil and started moving it on the page. You know, all of worry swirling around all of this, what's going to happen, my marriage, blah, blah, blah, all just went. So it was definitely a leap of faith, but it was like, ah, I can do this. It wasn't even a, I think I can do this. It was, this is what I want to do.

Claire Waite Brown: 1:40

Hi, I'm Claire. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or refound their creativity as adults. We'll explore their childhood experiences of the arts, discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love, and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two. We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their newfound artistic pursuits and how their creative lives enrich their practical, everyday lives. This time, I'm chatting with Bonny Snowdon. Hello, Bonny, how are you?

Bonny Snowdon: 2:17

I'm really well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Claire Waite Brown: 2:21

Oh, you're very welcome. Start by telling me what your current creative outlet is, please.

Bonny Snowdon: 2:28

It's coloured pencils. It's been coloured pencils for the last 10 years. It's my 10 year anniversary this year. It's my obsession, which strangely has not disappeared. I caught my other obsessions out, it stayed with me and I absolutely love it. And I'm finding some sort of newfound creativity in imagination work, rather than just working from photographs, bringing in a little bit of abstract, that kind of thing. So still very much my realism with coloured pencils, but, yeah, just kind of getting a little bit even more creative, if you like. Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown: 3:00

Brilliant. So it's still evolving.

Bonny Snowdon: 3:03

It really, really is. And I think it's because of all of the personal development stuff that I've been doing as well. I think that's almost like unlocked a bit of a door inside me. And now I feel sort of. It wasn't that, wasn't feeling courageous or brave before, but, you know, sometimes it's very much a comfort zone. This is my comfort zone. Oh, I'm not doing anything else. I'm not picking a paintbrush up, I'm not doing this. And now I'm like, I could do whatever, whatever I want.

Claire Waite Brown: 3:33

Brilliant.

Bonny Snowdon: 3:34

But the coloured pencils are still sort of like the the basis of it. And that's quite exciting.

Claire Waite Brown: 3:39

It is. I am excited to learn more. Let's have a troll. Through your whole experience as a youngster, did creative activities play a role in your life? Were they encouraged? Were they positively in your life at school or at home?

Bonny Snowdon: 3:57

Yeah, definitely. My grandparents were very creative and my dad was really creative in his own way. He used to make model ships and airplanes and things from kits and things from matchsticks. So I grew up in a family where there were six children. In the 70s we had freedom, not like now. There were no telephones, there was no nothing. We just used to all go off and have adventures and it was amazing. I mean, you know, luckily I lived in a beautiful part of the UK in North Yorkshire. I went into school loving art. Art was always my favorite subject. It was just something that I love to do, particularly horses. My love was horses. I wanted to be a horse when I was five. So all I wanted to. Becky just used to spend my time galloping around the garden on my hands and knees. All my trousers had holes in or green knees and I used to make noises like horses. I thought I was an amazing child. I must have come across as very strange, but I loved horses. So that's. That's pretty much what I drew the majority of the time. Even at sort of secondary school, you know, at sort of like 11, 12 horses.

Claire Waite Brown: 5:08

Speaking of school and secondary school and studies, did you have plans for further education other than being a horse when you grew up? Was there something else you wanted to be when you grew up?

Bonny Snowdon: 5:20

Yes, absolutely. I. I really wanted to go into the arts. I was not academic, I was not interested at all in working at school. You know, if I put my mind to it, I could do really well, but I was just not interested at all. And I ended up leaving at 15 and going on to a local college. Because at 15 you can't go on and do a degree, you can't go on and do a foundations course, anything like that. So, you know, we decided rather than stay on and do A levels, which I couldn't think of anything worse, quite frankly, we decided, let's go and do a BTEC National Diploma, General Art and Design, get a feel for all of the different bits and pieces, and then go on and do a foundation degree or a degree in Fine Art afterwards. So that's what I did. Went to college. Absolutely hated it. I hated it. If I was to go back now at 55 and do a BTEC National Diploma in Art and Design, I flipping love It. I'd love all of that. Oh, we're going to make sculptures. Oh, we're going to do this. But at 15, I was like, oh, no, I couldn't bear it. I loved all of the intricate stuff, the little things. So photography, I really enjoyed and putting it through the. All of the solutions, all of that kind of stuff in the dark room, I really, really enjoyed the graphic design element of it. And there was a. Funnily enough, we had a watercolour class as well that we'd done, and I excelled at that. There were tiny, weeny, little, very intricate watercolour, and I excelled at that. But those are the only three things that I loved. Everything else was big, bold. We did a lot of life drawing, which actually I was pretty good at, but that was all on, like, three meter pieces of paper. You know, at 17, I'm then looking at where I'm going on. I'm told my portfolio is not good enough. And I didn't get in anywhere. Oh, so that, I mean, I don't recall being devastated. I remember being upset. But I don't really carry on being upset about stuff. I'm like, oh, okay, what should we do now? And actually, my dad knew this couple of brothers who owned an advertising agency in Harrogate, which is the. The town near me, and they gave me a job as a tea girl. So I went and made tea for all of the executives.

Claire Waite Brown: 7:32

Now, I've seen such a thing on the tv. This is actually a role is making tea for other people and taking it around to them.

Bonny Snowdon: 7:40

Yeah, you know, they have specific teacups that they have. So this person has this. We had one guy I can't name, Terence, I think his name was one of the brothers. He had a big teacup and you had to open the door, you weren't allowed to go in, and you had to put the teacup on top of the filing cabinet and you had to close the door. That was his tea. So learn. Learned that. But obviously with me being in an advertising agency, I then ended up in the studio, told them I was interested in graphic design. And then I started learning the art of paste up, and now we've got computers, all of that kind of stuff. Back then, you learned how to take a piece of bromide with your text on it, take a piece of bromide with your image on it, and you would paste it up onto a board and you'd have it all straight. And that was my first sort of experience with graphic design. And then I ended up becoming really, really interested in the typography side of stuff. So I became a typesetter and learn how to use their big machine, which type a code in to tell it how long the line length was, what point size it was, what font it was, all of that. And then if you wanted to change the font, you had a big barrel next to it and a belt and you had to wrap the belt into this barrel and that was the typeface that you were using then came out and you had to go into a dark room and develop it all.

Claire Waite Brown: 8:59

Wow. Well, how long did that last, though? Because that got, you know, taken over by other things. Were you still involved when that was changing?

Bonny Snowdon: 9:08

Yeah. So what happened was I stayed at that company and then the girl who was doing the typesetting taught me how to do it so I could take over from her. And. And then we stayed in touch and she was like, there's a job going, but you need to be able to type at this speed. So I taught myself to type. I'm a mum's typewriter, you know, touch type. Off I went for my interview and I got the job and I stayed there at that particular company, this was 88, and I stayed at that company until 98 when I got married. And then I went freelance after that and that was typesetting, going into page layout. So I wasn't necessarily a designer. People would come to me with their design and I would then take that design and I would put it into a digital format. And I'm not blowing my own trumpet here. I was brilliant, I was fast, I was accurate. And it was really busy, in fact, ridiculously busy. We'd have three shifts going, so you might have. We used to do something called Personnel today. So they'd have their conference during the day, they'd come to us with all of the news from that conference in the evening. We'd then have to lay the whole magazine out, then we'd have to ship it over to Leeds, have it printed, have it back on their doorstep by seven o' clock in the morning, you know, it was quite exciting. So got married in 98, went freelance and then I ended up working with a contract for Aviva in York, which was such a cushy number, it was unbelievable. So I'd come from a really fast paced studio into a studio that basically all they were doing was going through policy documents and making amends. They offered me a full time role, which was great. And then they allowed me to work from home because I had children at that point. They were really advanced like that because not many people work from home, but they set me up at home, had a computer, I had an ISDN line. And I used to go pick up all of the jobs on a Monday, back in on Friday. Here you are. Here's the work. What happens when you go into a company and you're good at your job? A big company like Aviva, they end up putting you into managerial roles, but without necessarily any trait. I don't think many people are in managerial roles, have actually had proper leadership training. Training. So you just get moved up because you're good at that. So you might as well, you know, you're going to be good at as being a leader. So off I went. I was quite, you know, very passionate. I loved what I do, confident, all of that kind of stuff. So there I am in a sort of studio manager role, not knowing anything about what I'm supposed to be doing and kind of mirroring what I've seen other people do. And we have this. I don't know whether you've heard of the 360 before. It's vile. It's a corporate thing. It's a corporate thing. It's basically one of those processes where everybody gets information and they have to fill in all of this information about their peers and their managers. So how well do they do on a score of 1 to 5, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we did this big 360, and it's called a 360 because it's like all the way around. And I came out and they were just like, we need to talk to you about your 360. Basically, everybody thinks you're really, really terrible. And I was like, oh, my God. What? I just was not a good leader and people didn't like how I handled stuff, blah, blah, blah. And funnily enough, at that time, I'd literally done a day of coach training for my riding. Cause I used to do dressage and everything with horses. And it was this leadership coach who had come and done a day for dressage riders. But the stuff that he'd been teaching us was so adaptable that you could bring it to anything. So I had sat down, had this meeting about my 360, and they're basically saying, you're gonna be managed out of your role. And I was like, what? What do I do? And there's part of me going, what a load of tosh. What they're talking about. And then there's part of me going, well, hang on a second. I need to reflect on this. So I Started to learn a little bit more about the coaching side of stuff. I decided to fund myself with a degree in coaching and mentoring. She'd got, like, a leadership part in there as well. And I turned myself around, turned my team around, ended up with a really strong performing team. And then when I left in 2014, I trained people up to take over from me. So it was this sort of succession path thing that I'd sort of created within the team. So ended up leaving and everyone being really sad, you know, because I decided I can either tell everybody that they're talking rubbish or I can believe them and I can do something about it. And I decided to do something about it.

Claire Waite Brown: 13:56

That must have been a lot of work to do the actual coaching on top of still doing the job with Aviva.

Bonny Snowdon: 14:04

Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown: 14:05

Did you find that you were veering more towards one than the other?

Bonny Snowdon: 14:09

Yes, coaching. So I ended up having my hip replaced in 2014, and I had quite a lengthy time off work, which was when I was working for Aviva. So I did quite a lot of my. Whatever you call it, the stuff you

Claire Waite Brown: 14:23

can do when you're sitting there with a. Yeah.

Bonny Snowdon: 14:25

Not going out and coaching people, but doing all of my notes and writing up all of them. So I did quite a lot of that while I was sort of incapacitated. And then I was offered a job coaching, which was brilliant. So I became an exec coach and worked in the uk, worked in the Middle east coaching people, but also teaching the degree course that I'd just taken.

Claire Waite Brown: 14:46

Oh.

Bonny Snowdon: 14:48

So I was doing workshops for people and it was really fun because there's a curriculum. You obviously have to teach certain things, but you can bring your own spin in. You know, if you're going to teach any of the models, you can teach it in your way, you can teach it with your experience so you don't have to teach somebody else's words. And I really like that. So I could bring myself into the teaching, which was lovely. And where I got my joy of teaching.

Claire Waite Brown: 15:16

There are different types of coaching and you mentioned exec.

Bonny Snowdon: 15:19

Yeah. So coaching is trying to kind of coax stuff out of people, but not answering their questions for them or not trying to put something into their head. And a lot of people think that that's what coaching is, you know, Well, I know what you need. What you should do is, well, that's not coaching, that's more of the mentorship. So a mentor is where somebody's already been down that route and they can go, well, do you know what I've Done that. Let me show you what I did, and I'll help you.

Claire Waite Brown: 15:47

Okay.

Bonny Snowdon: 15:48

Whereas with coaching, it's more about the questions. You know, you're asking people questions, they're coming up with their own answers and responses. And a lot of the time, I don't know whether you find this, but I will. Quite often, if I'm doing a long journey, I will sit in the car and I'll speak into my sort of Dictaphone thing, and I'll be like, okay, so we're doing this, and we're doing this, and quite often I will talk myself round a problem that I've had. And that's basically what a coach does, is facilitate these amazing conversations that somebody ultimately can have with themselves. They go out of the door, having spoken for an hour, and the coach has just been sat there asking the odd question, and they go, brilliant. Thank you so much for all of that advice. You're like, well, I didn't do anything. You did it all.

Claire Waite Brown: 16:30

This is very full story so far, and we haven't got to the. So let's get to the drawing. Why, when, how did this come in?

Bonny Snowdon: 16:46

So 2015 and 2016 were quite. They were quite stressful. So obviously I was away from home quite a lot. I've got three children. My marriage was not particularly happy, and that was down to my husband. His father died. I think it might have been 2009. And he was very susceptible to sort of depression. He just hit the lowest of lows and went from somebody who was wonderful, you know, who had his moments, but, you know, to somebody who wasn't very nice at all and not very kind, and it was really difficult, you know, sort of quite emotionally abusive, mentally abusive, that kind of thing. So there was that kind of pull. You know, I liked being away from home because I wasn't having that, the. The abuse. But I also wanted to be at home because, of course, my. My children were there and I wanted to look after them. So it was quite stressful. And we'd been doing quite a lot about mindfulness in the coaching sort of arena. And that's when I. I kind of found this thing called mindfulness colouring and how it can actually take you away and empty your head and all of that kind of stuff. I was like, well, do you know what? Let's give that a try. And it was coming up to Christmas 2015, and my daughter said, you know, what do you want for Christmas? And I was like, you know what? I would really like a colouring book and some pencils. So Christmas Morning I opened my present from her and it's this colouring book and it's these 12 WHSmith pencils. And I was absolutely hooked. I couldn't believe the change in what was going on in my head when I picked up a pencil and started moving it on the page. You know, all of this worry, swearing around, all of this, what's going to happen, my marriage, blah, blah, blah, all just went. I could not get enough of it. So then I was literally colouring and colouring and colouring and colouring and I was sharing it on my Facebook because I was like, look what I'm doing. And then people started asking me to, to draw their, their pets because I kind of leaned towards animals that I was colouring and they're like, oh, you know, can you draw my dog? And I was like, well, I don't really draw, you know, I kind of. Oh no, no, you're really good. You're really good. I've seen your work. And probably around end of Feb, beginning of March, started to draw animals and again was just obsessed. So then the colouring kind of took a backseat and the drawing became much more sort of prolific and I just had people coming out of my ears asking for commissions. And at that point I was completely self taught. The first drawings I did, I was so proud of them, shared them on Facebook. And there was a friend of mine who had horses and she saw this, this horse that I'd drawn and she was like, he's really good, but what about putting some bone structure in and veins and all of that? Can remember getting really bristly. I'm not into that realism rubbish. I'm not doing that. I just want to do my own thing. And then of course, like I always do, I'll come away, I'll reflect and I'll be like, maybe she's got a point. So then the next drawing I did, I was like, right, okay, let's concentrate on these veins. And it is clear that I can observe stuff and I kind of understand form and I know horses because I've been around horses all my life. So I went from very flat sort of two dimensional drawing to 3D very, very quickly. And that was totally self taught. That was just me in my kitchen with my phone drawing. I wasn't on YouTube. I didn't even know that there were groups that existed that help people with stuff. Didn't know any of that. And then of course I found some groups and I found other people that were doing the similar thing to me. And of course that was incredibly helpful. You sort of Absorb stuff. That's how I started and that's how I started doing the commissions.

Claire Waite Brown: 20:40

I'm going to jump ahead actually, because of your talking about being self taught and learning through observation and then finding groups and things. But now you teach in various different ways. So why did you want to do that? How did you start doing that?

Bonny Snowdon: 20:58

The teaching side of stuff I think is very natural. Comes with my personality. It's something that I did with my coaching. I really enjoyed holding workshops and I really enjoyed seeing people get something and then go on and develop it. I like seeing people do well. So that was kind of a natural progression really. And when it got to sort of like the end of 2016 when I handed my notice in and decided I was going to become a full time artist, there on my business plan was teaching, teaching groups, teaching online. Because of course at that point I could see, oh, this is what people are doing now, how I share stuff, I just give everything. I'm just like, you know, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm just like, you can have it all. When I was sharing things, I was like, oh, you know, I've just done this and I found this really helpful and this really helpful. And all of a sudden I kind of became this person that people were like, oh, well, have you seen Bonny Snowdon? She's really good at helping you do this and if you ask her a question, she'll help. And that's what I did. And I probably did turn it into a bit of a strategy. To be honest, at some point when I was kind of realizing, oh, I'm wanting to teach, maybe this could be sort of part of the plan. But I think it was more of a subconscious strategy rather than a real business plan. I think naturally I just help people and I like to help people. I didn't actually start teaching until 2019 when I started my Patreon channel. I had done a couple of workshops before. The reason I started it was because I wanted to help people. But I also wanted some extra money in my business because if you're running a business, you need to make money. Because if you don't make money, you don't have a business. So I was like, you know what, I'll start a Patreon, a couple of hundred pounds a month. That's going to be really great. It's going to help towards my mortgage, all of that kind of stuff. And of course at that point my husband had left. He left the mid-2017, walked out, which was equally great and equally incredibly sad. Because, you know, my marriage vows meant a lot, but that was that. So I started my Patreon and I literally within the first week, I think I got 200 people and I was earning like a couple of thousand pounds a month. And I was like, what, what, what, what? That's like, I didn't expect this. And it just kept on going up and up and up and up. I think at the peak, it was nearly 3,000 students. And there are a lot of artists on Patreon and there are a lot of good artists on Patreon, but there are not very many who have got the higher figures. And there were some who were way higher than me. You know, they had like 4 or 5,000 students on Patreon and everything. So that was amazing. But it became very clear to me in 2020. So, of course, 2020, we had the whole hideous year. Sadly, he was my ex husband by then, because he'd gone on and married somebody else. He ended up taking his own life in 2020. So that was like, you know, we're all in lockdown. It was just like, ugh, you know, and obviously having to cope with that and cope with running a business and cope with having three children all in the same house, and we're trying to kind of get over this terrible event and the grief and all of that kind of stuff. And of course, I just go, right, okay, off we go. And you've just got to put your strong hat on and you've just got to go, can't deal with this yet. We'll deal with that another time. And off you go. And I was like, right, I don't really like the experience that Patreon is giving my students. I want to start looking at creating my own platform. So the whole of 2020, I was thinking, how can I sort my own platform out? I actually employed somebody to come and help with my socials, all of that kind of stuff. And then 2021, I managed to get a consultant to come and help with building what is now my. My membership. Somebody who was an expert in. In building memberships, because there is an art in building a membership. I launched it in the September of 21 and off we went. It was amazing.

Claire Waite Brown: 25:18

Very well done. You. When you said even starting the Patreon, you couldn't imagine how successful that would be so quickly when you made the decision. And in fact, why and how did you make the decision? I'm going to do my usual thing and ask a million questions at once. How and why did you make the decision to Go full in on the art. And what were your emotions like around that? From having a very secure financial money coming in to then doing this whole thing that is all your own invention.

Bonny Snowdon: 25:55

Yeah. So I was actually working as an art consultant. I'd left the, the coaching company because they wanted me to go and work overseas more often. I couldn't. My children were doing their exams and I ended up getting a job as an art consultant for a company called White Wall. I think they're called Clarendon now. The most fantastic training, amazing sales training. Really, really, really enjoyed that job. You got to meet people, you got to talk to people, you got to learn about the artists. You get to see incredible art. Absolutely loved it and I was really good at it. But every day you had to sit and do cold calling and it killed me, it killed me. I was ringing the same flipping people like every week. I'm ringing you again, do you want to come and look at some art? And I'm like, oh my God. So I was actually, I was with my eldest sister, we were traveling to Leeds to have dinner and on the train we were just chatting away and blah, blah, blah. And she was like, I know you love your job so much and everything, but Charlie, her husband Charlie, and I really think you should go full time as an artist. She said, but I know how much you love your job. And I was like, whoa, hang on a second, hang on. I do love my job, but I also really hate the cold calling. What do you mean? She was like, we both think that you could be amazing as a full time artist. And she was like, how's about if you go for it and if you need extra help, we can be a bit of a buffer. And I was like, let's do it. So there was definitely a leap of faith. You're leaving a full time role and there's no guarantees or anything. Yes. You've got somebody saying, you know, we can be a bit of a buffer, but what, what does it mean? You know, is it sort of like £100 every month or is it.

Claire Waite Brown: 27:34

And how long for?

Bonny Snowdon: 27:35

How long for? Or is it, you know, oh, we're going to give you, we're going to sub you, you know, £30,000 off, off you go, you know. So it was definitely a leap of faith, but it was like, ah, I can do this. It wasn't even a, I think I can do this. It was, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to do. I have a very strong sense of self belief. That's my Faith. I have the faith that everything will turn out and it's unwavering. So if something comes in and scuppers something, I'm like, eh, yeah, that's a bit rubbish. Let's just crack on and try something else. So I became a full time artist from the 1st of January 2017 and I did it properly. I had to have my business plan. I worked everything out. I made sure that my prices were raised on a regular basis, not just once a year. I was good at marketing, but I kind of come from a business background if you like. Anyway. So yeah, I did take a leap of faith but then there was obviously that sort of if you need help, it's there. And I did get a little bit of help that first year. But by the end of that first year I could pay them back everything that they'd helped me with, which wasn't a huge amount, but it meant that 2018 I was all in on my own, doing my own thing and that was just purely commission work, which was amazing. And then of course when Hatrian arrived, that was when things really started to sort of look up business wise and my business started to become really, really successful.

Claire Waite Brown: 29:12

You know, I want to go back to the feeling when you needed that feeling when you did the colouring and that first introduction into what is then the art and how that makes you feel. And you've got a very successful business, I know that as well as the school and commissions. You do books as well. So there's a lot going on. Do you still have that place of well being within your art? Can you still get that in this busy life?

Bonny Snowdon: 29:49

Absolutely. And that is with my, my own art. So I'm very specific about doing my own stuff. My other sort of outlet is journaling and writing. So I've been journaling for nearly a year, proper journaling, morning pages, reflections on an evening. And then of course I got into the rabbit hole of different journals for different bits and pieces. So I now have a gorgeous ritual on a night where I pull a card, so an Oracle card. I don't go into the book and look to see what the card's about. So last night it was the Spirit Bear and it was take time out. So then I take that take time out and I write about what that means for me. So I have a little page in my journal and then on the next page I have three questions that I answer every night. That went well, that was annoying. Tomorrow I will. And then I write those out on that page and then I've got another Little notebook in that journal at the back that's full of quotes that I just write. So I've got stickers in it, I've got bits of, like, pretty paper that I've stuck in it. And then I've got all of these little quotes that I put in there. That's one part of my nightly ritual. And then I have a bigger journal where I have a lunar diary. I'm learning loads and loads about moonshine. I've got another notebook that is literally just my download. I have a sketchbook, so I try and sketch every day. And then I also have a notes, creative notes notebook. So if I've got anything, any ideas or anything that goes in there and they're all in one big fat journal and I only write and sketch with ink in a fountain pen. And that. That together with my. With my drawing is the most gorgeous creative outlook. Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown: 31:51

Yeah. Oh, brilliant. Well, I'm so pleased that you have that.

Bonny Snowdon: 31:56

It's. It's so nice. And I've taken to kind of taking the sort of like a little sketchbook. So if I go, I like going to places on my own as well. So if I go, I'll journal sat at a restaurant. If I go to the seaside or something like that, I'll sketch there. I don't care if the sketches are rubbish. It's just, you know, what it's doing is it's capturing memories for me. And actually writing stuff captures memories far more than taking a photograph with my phone that I never see. I've also bought this little tiny printer and it's got these tiny little cards you stick in it. And I can print anything off my phone onto these little sort of sticky prints. And then I could put them in my journal as well.

Claire Waite Brown: 32:36

Oh, that sounds absolutely brilliant.

Bonny Snowdon: 32:38

It's so nice. Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown: 32:41

And finally, do you have any words of advice or just encouragement for anyone who is looking for something creative to try and maybe not sure whether to how to that kind of thing?

Bonny Snowdon: 33:00

Yeah, I would say pick something and do it, because the whole. Do I do this, do I do that? Do I do watercolour? Do I do pencil? You can procrastinate for years and another. Another two years down the line and you're still going to be going. Well, I was thinking about watercolour, but I'm not sure. You could have been doing watercolour for two years and you could be like, really proficient now and feeling amazing. I would just say pick something because you can always stop and change if you don't like it. And I think this is another thing that people sort of like, oh gosh, it's like me with books, I feel really guilty if I don't finish them. Why? I don't know, because it's stupid. But if you don't like something, just stop doing it and try something else. But what I'd say is pick something, but don't go all out in buying all of the stuff. Buy a small amount of things. See how you get on. If you choose coloured pencils, try and draw something. Try and understand the sort of like the pillars of coloured pencil. Try and understand how the fundamentals work rather than getting a sketch pad, some pencils, and just drawing some squares to see what the colours are like. Because again, that's kind of procrastination. Learn a little bit about why we do this and why we do that. And you can find tons of stuff online. Books and YouTube and groups and all of that kind of thing. And yeah, just kind of learn a little bit about it and just do it. And don't worry if it's rubbish because the likelihood is it will be rubbish to begin with. Like really rubbish. But that's okay because you're just learning.

Claire Waite Brown: 34:35

Perfect. Thank you so much, Bonny. How can we connect with everything that you do?

Bonny Snowdon: 34:42

You can find me on Bonny Snowdon Academy.com. Bonny Snowdon Academy on Facebook. Bonny Snowdon Academy on Instagram got podcast which is living in full colour. I've got a couple of newsletters you can sign up for. So I've got my Scrub My Weekly Scribble. So if you want to know any sort of like hints and tips, you can sign up for that on my website. And I've also got Bonny Unfiltered, which is another newsletter not about coloured pencils, but more about me and my life and the crazy stuff I get up to.

Claire Waite Brown: 35:12

Brilliant. Thank you so much. I've had such a brilliant chat.

Bonny Snowdon: 35:16

It's been really nice. Thank you.

Claire Waite Brown: 35:18

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, perhaps you'd like to financially contribute to Future episodes at buymeacoffee.com/creativityfound. There's a link in the show Notes. If you are listening on a value for value enabled app such as Fountain, TrueFans or Podcast Guru, feel free to send a few sats my way. And if you have no idea of what I'm talking about, you can find out more by listening to my sister podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice.