Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Pamela Yeung. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Pamela, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you’ve thought about whether to sign with an agent or manager?

After leaving my illustration desk job at an educational publisher at the tail end of COVID, I first started applying for agencies in September 2021. I had just finished figuring out what I wanted the style of my personal identity to look like. Not the style I was able to efficiently make to get a job done, but something that was all mine. Eager and hopeful, I applied for 12 agencies whose artist rosters I thought I could fit in with. I received solid rejections or crickets from all my applications. Slightly dejected, I went back to the drawing board to analyze my mistakes, but I just couldn’t figure out my weakness. Fortunately, I found Agents for Change, an organization that helps underrepresented individuals in the industry receive assistance to break into the business by connecting them with established agencies, art directors, and other professionals.
I signed up for a last-minute portfolio review with Jacqueline from Illustration X, and she was extremely encouraging and helpful in her analysis of my work. She pointed out that while my work was whimsical and sweet, it lacked a necessary layer of detail and polish to make it truly complete.
Enthused, I upended my entire portfolio, redoing most of my work and adding additional pieces to overcome the shortcomings. I reapplied for agencies in December of the same year, and was accepted into my first choice, The Bright Agency.
One art test and video call later, I was in!! Although the hard work and pursuit of improvement never ceases, it was a dream come true.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m an illustrator who adores creating pieces with whimsical, cute animals. Some may say such things are only made for small children, but I love it when an artwork I make brightens up the day of anyone—child or adult. I have made work for toys, puzzles, books, and magazines, and cannot wait to continue to bring more wholesomeness into the world.

How did you build your audience on social media?

In college I made an account called @Pamelooart on Instagram. I grew my style slowly on it and built up a faithful audience of 7,000+ who loved my art over the years. To most it may not be a lot, but it is extremely difficult to build an audience as an artist, especially from zero.

Unfortunately, I ended up losing my account one day after opening a few too many tabs on my desktop, and the Instagram system thought I was doing something wrong. Apparently, it’s a common problem which last I checked was not fixed, so lesson learned: never open too many Instagram tabs at once.

Devastated, I tried to contact support, but they are impossible to get ahold of. After several attempts I gave up and made new account, @pamelooartt. Compared to my old account, the algorithm really favored me, and now I have over 12,000 followers to share my art with. I still miss my old account with my old archives that I will never get back, but I feel very fortunate. I cannot say exactly how I did it, as I still don’t understand the algorithm to this day, but I’m glad I didn’t give up.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Stop with the unregulated AI. Stealing from artists by using their unpaid work to create generated images and removing the “human” from the “humanities” is ridiculous. My hope is that people will vote to protect visual artists, musicians, writers, etc from such attrocities, and choose not to support any companies who use AI over human artists to make more money.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pamelooart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamelooartt/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PamelooArt/