How My Art Went Viral and I Became a Full-Time Artist | Amanda Oleander | TEDxSDSU

[Music] I'm sure every one of you can come up and paint a straight new line it's pretty easy you have to think much after a while our brain goes on autopilot [Music] but then if I change it up and you're up here instead of me you might think what am I going to do next it's not a very comfortable thing to change things up because now they'll go back to the straight line do I even know what I'm doing [Music] let's just go back to what's comfortable see we're often afraid of the uncertainty in life we don't want to move to a new state to a new country because we'd have to leave our family and friends behind it's not an easy thing to do a lot of you guys are gonna have to do this soon once you graduate you're gonna have to make a choice just like I did this takes me back to the day that I had to do one of the hardest things in my life takes me back to May of 2013 when I had to leave my family and friends behind my parents had outside of my bedroom door and they told me hey you can always stay here and pursue art and be an art teacher or a graphic designer it's not that they didn't believe that I can make it in a big city but it was a comfortable and easy choice the next day I left I was determined to persevere through the uncomfortable to reach my goal as an artist I started with an unpaid internship I was eating a lot of peanut butter jelly sandwiches and I was sleeping on the floor not on the actual floor but on a mattress on the floor I canvassed for Greenpeace I also sold perfumes on the weekend and I managed a boutique growing up my dad always told me to save save your money because one day you're going to have an idea you're gonna want to do something you're gonna need money for this so save your money and work really hard so I did I worked hard ever since I was 16 years old I had a whole bunch of odd jobs and that's what got me toss Angeles in the first place it was those savings but Who am I kidding those life savings barely lasted in Los Angeles so I had to get three jobs after that I always made time to create art was always my constant even when people asked me what do you do for what do you do and I always would say I'm an artist because these jobs were just a stepping stone and I knew where I wanted to get in life so I've been persistently sending out my portfolio I was posting on social media all the time and just trying to get my artwork out there even though I would I had all these other jobs finally one day the phone rang I was sitting at an Italian boutique just sending out my artwork and putting out online when a representative for entertainment reached out and said we love your work we'd love to interview you for a full-time artist position I was so excited it was the first time that they had a full-time artist ie entertainment so I went to the interview and I landed the job so I became a full-time artist I really wanted to become my own boss as soon as possible so I would draw at entertainment from 9:00 to 5:00 and then from 5:00 to 10:00 I was just using their computer because it was much better than the one that I had at home so I just sat there and worked on my website on my artwork everybody was like man you have a long shift so that lasted for eight months that part of my life and he let me go to put money into fashion after eight months so I stayed that last day till 3 o'clock in the morning I really had to milk it I made sure my website looked really good and then I packed up and left I had just left II I recently turned 25 so the clock was ticking my internal clock was ticking of my goal of becoming a full-time artist and then that I turned 25 and then on March 26 and app was created that changed my life I was soon to become my own boss and my own brand the name of the app is periscope lives Twitter's live streaming app I painted live and talked about life on it and before I knew I I became the most followed woman on the entire app when it was like a week or two I was just it was very overwhelming my artwork started selling like never before I was shirt and magazines on TV in places I've never even traveled before Australia Japan it was really wild there's that my first spread Michael Strahan we're best friends now and I was interviewed for BuzzFeed which ironically I submitted my artwork to BuzzFeed then they declined me and then they reached out to me to do a documentary so that was pretty awesome so after that it resulted in getting signed to UTA which is one of the world's best talent agencies so everything was really amazing to say the least but it was extremely overwhelming I was living by myself I had no help no family didn't really have friends so I had to package all this art by myself answer all these emails so I stopped eating because I was working so much and I started getting a little bit sick and losing weight so my parents were really worried about me so they sent to my grandma she's so cute that's the magazine I was in so she Kate that food was probably for me that she has in her hand so she came to Los Angeles for three months and she helped me cook and package art and she was just part of the journey we we drove up to San Diego when I had to speak so we had so much fun together I started to speak in conferences and in panels and people would always ask me how did you do it how did you trend what you know tell us your secret people ask me all the time actually I asked that backstage and I always tell them you know I wish I can tell you that there was just a link that you click on you pay X amount of money and you go viral but that's not really how it works and don't do that it's not gonna work I'm very there are five key principles that helped me with my success and I really believe that it will help anybody with there's one invest in your mind make sure you invest in your mind in your craft don't cheap out on cheap paint don't cheap out on you know a cheaper whatever it is you don't need that Louie Vuitton bag you can put it towards something that's really important resilience bounce back after rejections you're going to hear no multiple times you're gonna hear that you're not good enough but just keep going online presence post your work online everybody's head is either we're in this world or we're in the online world so it's such a powerful tool and if you have the luxury of having a phone which most most of us here do then use it consistency create every single day that's very important you can't just post some of the time you want to just be consistent with it and authenticity Crean from personal experience tell your story through your work I've been quite literally telling my story through my artwork I've been drawing for the past 200 days and my goal is to draw 400 drawings by the end of 2018 with a two-day break before my wrist falls off I actually I got a guard coming in this weekend to help me with that so I've been posting a drawing add an Instagram to my community of over three hundred and twenty-five thousand people from all over the world I'm enthralled by the way that people behave behind closed doors these intimate moments that we never get to see but if you bring a camera into the picture then you know the person is going to act differently so only you can relate to these moments but you never get you know you never see this in a photograph so I draw them you can all relate to that laundry piling up that actually has a great story behind it if you want to go in on the conversation one of the best parts of this whole challenge to see how similar we are no matter what language or country we live in an interesting thing that I learned last week through my drawings that most people around the world they wish upon a fallen eyelash but those people from the Netherlands don't that was pretty interesting you just read the comments and you learn a lot so my art has been published all over the world first it was just me because of periscope and you know I didn't really like that that much because I was like okay cool yeah I'm the top followed woman but this is my artwork so now I make I don't you can't see my photo anywhere on my Instagram and it's just my art and it's also been published all over the world which was crazy I actually I need to go to these places so I've been a full-time artist for four years now when I speak about this I speak it loud and proudly because when I was young I've never had an artist a female artist with immigrant parents that was a full-time artist to look up to I needed somebody that I can see and say if she can do it I can too so step out of your comfort zone if you're really brave you can mix some colors and make it your own I hope it comes out better than this for you guys thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 140,410

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Art, Entertainment

Id: CQ4OnVJBdXw

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2018