Teen artist finds success working with pop star Billie Eilish - WPBF

Teen artist finds success working with pop star Billie Eilish (Video) - WPBF
Eilish using student's work on one of her T-shirts

Excerpt:

Even when he was a small child, Sam Mazzarino knew he was a pretty good artist.

“I’ve been drawing pretty much my whole life,” the 17-year-old said. “I always draw on the side of my paper.”

Mazzarino is heading into his senior year at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts.

Last year, he decided he wanted to try to turn his art into his job.

“I realized that famous people, certain famous people, have a lot of fan pages,” Mazzarino said. “And I was like, ‘That’s a market.’”

Fan pages are pages on social media dedicated to celebrities.

Mazzarino started drawing pictures for those pages, hoping they would post his artwork.

One of those pictures he drew was of the pop star Billie Eilish.

“I would draw a picture of Billie Eilish and send it to literally hundreds of fan pages of hers,” Mazzarino said.

Mazzarino said most of the pages ignored him but a few dozen posted his picture.

That led to the moment that changed Mazzarino’s life.

He received a message on social media.

“Hey there. I manage Billie Eilish and we (her and I) love the drawing,” the message said.

The message continued by asking Mazzarino if he wanted to work with the pop star.

“I thought it was fake,” Mazzarino said with a laugh. “He had (about) 500 followers. So I was like, ‘Yeah, OK. This is a fake account.’”

It wasn’t fake and the next thing Mazzarino knew, he was making a deal with Billie Eilish.

“He gave me a price and I was like, ‘Yes!’” Mazzarino said. “I wasn’t going to try and negotiate or anything. This was such a big opportunity. I probably would have paid to do it.”

A year later, Mazzarino’s drawing is still selling on the Billie Eilish website.

Mazzarino’s other drawings are also selling on his own Instagram page, @reenostus.

He said it’s all because of the start he got from his deal with Billie Eilish.

“I was like, ‘Wow. I must be destined to do this,’” he said. “I’m so glad this happened.”

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