Bonny Snowdon, “Bay Arab,” colored pencils, shared with permission.
Bonny Snowdon —Overcoming Adversity through Creativity
Bonny Snowdon's artistic journey illustrates what can happen when adversity meets resilience.
Today, as a well-known colored pencil art teacher and mentor to thousands of students worldwide, she heads up the Bonny Snowdon Academy, a $1.2 million a year company with a membership of 3,000 students, all learning to draw in a realistic style and many starting their own art businesses.
But it wasn't always this way. Just a few years ago, Snowdon was mired in the trauma of financial struggles and, sequentially, an abusive marriage, painful divorce, and the devastating loss of her
ex-husband to suicide. But it was through these hardships that she discovered the transformative power of creativity.
Finding peace through creativity
It was 2015 when things were at a low point for this mother of three living in Yorkshire, U.K, but an unexpected coping mechanism appeared in the form of a coloring book and colored pencils that her daughter gave her as a gift. For Snowdon, even though she'd been told at 17 that she wasn't good enough to be an artist and hadn't drawn for 30 years, the gift was a lifesaver.
"Coloring enabled me to empty my mind, basically," says Snowdon. "Everything just sort of disappeared, and it gave me a space to not to have negative things going around in my head all of the time." In fact, coloring with colored pencils became a type of mindful art practice that allowed her to focus on drawing instead of all the difficulties going on in her life.
"It was wonderful to see the colors and feel of the pencil against the paper. It gave me peace of mind and a sense of quietness." She didn't know it, but it was the beginning of her creative journey and a flourishing art career.
Bonny Snowdon, “Bee,” (left) and “Girl in the Daffodils” (right), colored pencils, shared with permission.
Becoming a professional artist
When she first discovered coloring books and drawing, Snowdon would stay up late each night working at her kitchen table to make sure she drew every day. As her skills and techniques improved, she began selling pet portraits, completing eight to nine drawings every month.
"When I first started, I was drawing 10 hours a day. I didn't have a business as such, I was just drawing. As I progressed, I started to focus on social media to sell my art, so my days were equally divided between marketing and drawing," Snowdon said.
To learn more about art marketing, she signed up for Ann Kullberg's "Shine Video Series" which teaches artists how to set up a commission-based art business. "Ann provided great information about pricing so when I went into art full time, I knew I needed to set higher prices for my artwork. Gradually, as I increased the cost of my portraits, I could complete far fewer commissioned drawings, but earn more."
In late 2016, Snowdon's older sister encouraged her to quit her regular job and become full-time artist, and that's exactly what she did, officially beginning her career in early 2017.
"It's funny, people often ask me if I was scared to go into art full-time, but I honestly don't think I ever was," Snowdon says. "I made the decision that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life, no matter what, and had faith that it would all work out for the better."
The Bonny Snowdon Academy
As Snowdon progressed with her pet portrait business, she broadened her art services to include teaching art tutorials through Patreon. As the popularity of her Patreon classes steadily grew, she decided to establish the Bonny Snowdon Academy.
In addition to the solid drawing fundamentals and colored pencil techniques she teaches through the Academy, Snowdon has found that many artists have their own challenges with mental health or relationship issues, so she includes confidence-building as part of her teaching style.
She's a voracious consumer of lectures, classes, and books by self-help and self-improvement experts, and she applies her expanding knowledge to help her students through any mental obstacles or challenges they face in their artistic pursuits.
"Many of my students start picking up on the habit I teach for them to have a healthier, more confident, mindset when they approach their art." She encourages them to turn around negative patterns in how they think about themselves or their talent, and replace them with a positive approach to their work.
Snowdon has some students who didn't have the self-assurance to switch on the video during a Zoom tutorial but who, after working with her for a few months, were able to turn on the video and speak live to a 2,000-person Zoom meeting. "I mean, that's incredible," Snowdon says, "because those are usually very long-standing mental walls to break through."
Snowdon feels strongly that if anyone has faced mental health issues, those struggles are not their true identity. She says, "People can change their beliefs about who they are, especially through art and creativity."
She even goes so far as to say she doesn't really think her classes are about colored pencils, or even drawing. "As an artist, if you really love what you do, regardless of what is in front of you on the paper, you can enjoy the whole wonderful process of creativity that makes you feel joy and makes you feel amazing," says Snowdon. "The process is what it's all about."
The power of resilience
Through all of the trials Snowdon has faced, one thing that kept her going was a deep sense of resilience. She credits her family for instilling the belief that she could accomplish anything she set her mind to, and this enabled her to move toward becoming a professional artist based on her newfound love of art and creativity.
As she explains, "My family taught me that life is for living and that you should do whatever your heart desires, and that has helped me so much with my confidence and self-esteem over the years. Knowing I had their backing and support was such a great help, and I probably wouldn't be where I am today without it."
Find out more on her website and find in-depth tutorials on Patreon.
