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Yorkshire mum’s £1M business drawing animals after tragic death of ex-husband
A mum-of-three has founded a business now worth £1,000,000 teaching people how to draw since losing her ex-husband.
Bonny Snowdon, 52, became a professional animal portrait artist in her mid-40s after her daughter bought her a colouring book and coloured pencils in 2016 – despite her not having drawn since school.
The 52-year-old, who left school aged 15, from Ripon, has gone on to launch the Bonny Snowdon Academy, one of the biggest online teaching platforms for Britain’s coloured pencil artists, where she is teaching 2,500 members to create lifelike drawings of their favourite animals, from cats and dogs to horses and even pigs. There are also members from India, Iran, US and Australia.
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Bonny’s business adventure began in 2016 when her daughter bought her a colouring book after hearing they were good for your mental health. Bonny says she “didn’t have a happy marriage and heard they were good for the mind” – she battled mental abuse during her 19-year marriage and claims drawing helped her deal with this.
She said: “He had always had a bit of anger issues and could be paranoid but nothing that really worried me. There were times where he’d put his fist through the wall but they were very few and far between. Then his dad died, and he took the death really badly, he became depressed but wouldn’t get help and things would swing from being okay to really awful. I lived on eggshells for years, not knowing when he was going to blow up.
“It got to the point where I was scared of talking about certain subjects, money was the main one, I could never talk about it and that’s the main reason I got into debt, I was too frightened to talk to him about needing to pay off a phone bill, that I ended up taking out credit cards and over time, the debt ballooned to over £22,000.
“In the end, he started talking about suicide and even told me he had located a place to do it, which terrified me. I tried so hard to support him and get him to the doctors, I rang the doctors and made appointments for him and went with him but when he sat there, he just said he was fine. It was a really dreadful time.”
Bonny said that he eventually left the family home and moved in with a new partner, but within a couple of years and despite re-marrying, her ex partner was dead after taking his own life during the 2020 lockdown.
“When he moved out, we discussed putting the family home up for sale, but I had nowhere to live and I had three teenage children and my three dogs,” she said.
“I remember being so worried about trying to find a rental property that would fit us all and take the dogs. I had just become a full-time artist and was not earning a huge amount of money then and had no real way of taking a mortgage on myself and paying him half the house.
“I was looking at rental properties which were going to cost more than the mortgage, and they didn’t take dogs. I can remember feeling sick all the time, trying to be okay for the children and run my then very new business.”
Although the majority was “happy” and “he was an amazing dad” she added: “Life just doesn’t work out and drawing helped me deal with that – when you are creative it transports you to somewhere else out of your life, I can draw for hours on end. I want to inspire others who are suffering, feeling low or struggling with something if you can be creative whether its craft, drawing or painting it just had this amazing way of being able to take you out of your head and that’s what I love about it.”
At this time Bonny had become a full time artist, despite not drawing since 1987, when she was 17, she fell in love with coloured pencils and people started asking her to draw their pets and found that it helped her through this difficult time. By 2019, just before lockdown, she was a full time commissioned artist drawing people’s pets draw their pets.
She then started teaching people her skills, she started teaching in 2019 and eventually launched the Bonny Snowdon Academy in 2021 which turns over around £1,000,000 annual revenue today. She said: “The best thing about it is the fact I am helping other people become creative again, a lot of people are similar to me and were told when they were young they not creative then found it again later in life – a lot of it is confidence too – my teaching allows me to help a lot of people.
“Its an incredible and amazing thing to be doing, I feel like I’m able to cheerlead people on and it doesn’t feel like a job at all, its the most wonderful thing to be able to do.”
With just a team of three, her businesses will turn over around £450,000 more last year, and happily, Bonny’s life is now worlds apart from her problem-plagued past. She says that creativity has also given the members of her Academy a new lease of life, with many of them changing careers and going on to work in art galleries, becoming professional artists in their own right, or launching art-related businesses.
She added: “Creativity is a portal to another world. It allows us to disappear from our everyday life – and if you don’t lead a very nice life that is just the most amazing thing. It quietens the mind – busy hands, quiet mind is the saying and it’s so true. Creativity in any form is in my opinion essential for healthy minds. I know myself how helpful it was, disappearing for hours with my colouring book.
“The sole reason I do it is because I’m passionate about my business, its why I get up on a morning. People often think its for money but the money isn’t the reason why I do it, I love drawing and seeing others succeed – I love seeing other people do what they have always dreamed to do. The message is that anyone can draw, weather you learn from someone.”
Through her work, Bonny now supports York-based IDAS, the North of England’s biggest domestic abuse and sexual violence charity and is this year awarding free scholarships to her academy, including a year’s membership and all the art-related materials, for a total of five women seeking help from the charity, as well as running a solo exhibition to raise funds for IDAS.
She said: “Domestic abuse can happen to anyone at any time, mentally as well as physically. I wish with all my heart that these charities didn’t have to exist, but sadly having experienced mental abuse first-hand, I know what a lifeline they are and I feel honoured to be able to support them.”
Click here to see more information about the Bonny Snowdon Academy or visit her Instagram @BonnySnowdonAcademy
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