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Speaking of Curves: Meet Plus Size Fashion Illustrator, Jonquel Pickney
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Oct 31, 2024
We're back with another Speaking of Curves series where we spotlight, celebrate, and support entrepreneurs and businesses in the Plus community! Join us every Thursday at 12 pm, EST we will interview different businesses, designers, indies, and influencers in the community! Today's guest is Fashion Illustrator, Jonquel Pickney.
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0:06
hello hello hello welcome back it's thursday we're back with the new speaking of curves
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um each week we do an interview featuring a designer a brand a business owner a creative an
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influencer in the plus space um with me marie janae i'm the creator of the kirby fashionista
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i'm the founder and the editor-in-chief sounds a little fancy right y'all notice i got new hair
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got my new hairdo like for the new year like for all the things we're doing so i'm feeling
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hella fancy um and i'm really really really excited about our guest but before i introduce her as you're
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tuning in let us know where you're tuning in from don't be shy we want to know say hello if you have questions
0:51
throughout our um live don't be shy drop a link drop a question um and and this is
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interactive right we're having a conversation it's called speaking of curves so we're
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going to talk about it right so our guest i'm really excited i've known her i want to say this i've known
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them for like like five-ish years or something maybe a little bit more anywho
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they are an artist a creative an entrepreneur who is really really really hella
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talented with their i want to say sketching drawing painting
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like all things plus size art and fashion like she is the the um epitome
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of both right we've seen her um do some collaborations with designers on business cards she's illustrated some things for us many
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moons ago i am so so so excited please say hello
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and welcome miss jonquil hello john quell hello hi i'm
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oh my gosh this is so exciting so you guys if you guys are just tuning in we are welcoming in miss jongwell of john
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paul art like so and then we have marsha saying hello from baltimore maryland
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we have kenny he's in texas baby how are you doing in texas
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oh our heart goes out to texas right now i mean i've been over here like trying
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to amplify like resources over on twitter um have you been able to to share any
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information do you know anyone in texas that you reached out to a lot of my family is in texas many of
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them without power without water so my dad has been on the phone all day with like our cousins and some
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of my uncles out there um it's all about how would a for a few days it's almost like a min
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another katrina in a way it's kind of triggering um in that space a little bit but they're in good spirits um and i'm
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hoping that they get the power back on as soon as possible because i always joke that if winter came to the south we
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wouldn't know what to do and we don't know what to do
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i'm in atlanta and i came right after snowmageddon and yeah i've been like every time i'm like is it
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gonna smell like and i'm a cali girl so i don't really know snow i already know i can't handle it
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right right i already know um tani responded she actually said i'm
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lucky to not have been affected so many are still without resources tani if there's any additional information
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that you can share that we can help amplify please share that with us okay um please share you know you can dm me you can you
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know we we're connected to any so i want to be able to help amplify and support however we can okay
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thank you so much thank you so much um and and then prayers to your family john well
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yeah yeah i'll definitely keep them at like it's just horrible i would be i i i needed to make sure we
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addressed it i wanted to make sure like we called attention to it especially like on top of verona
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on top of like the world right now right so let's kind of pivot a little bit
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i mean we're talking about rona you are creative you are all things creative by being
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shut in by being forced to sit down and just be still how has that impacted you as an
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artist i needed it i actually needed it actually before rona hit i had actually
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packed up my things and left um new york city to move back home because i needed like a break i needed to pause
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and like re-center myself and i was only supposed to do it temporarily but rona said no you're
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going to sit down and work everything out so right i was right i didn't intend to
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be back here this long um but where's here where's he here is new orleans
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okay okay there is no problem i thought what i wasn't i didn't intend to be in new orleans this
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long but i felt like almost as a country we needed to sit down and just recenter
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ourselves and my heart goes out to everybody who had to deal with you know the health issues that kobe
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brought i mean it was very very very scary um i live my parents are older
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so they were serious about the quarantine they admit that we were not going outside
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listen i'm trying to i have to like i have to fuss at my mother because she's cheap i feel like i have to parent my
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parents like i feel like i know you're not going to the casino
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you're not going to church no nana you don't need to go to walmart like no just stay
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home stay home yeah my mom had to do that with my dad too because he tried to sneak out a few
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times just to go to the walgreens he wanted to meet people so bad but i don't know it the funny thing is is
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that when i was in new york i had pretty much stopped drawing for a little while i had gone through a phase where i was
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like i was diagnosed with anxiety and i had stopped drawing at home now i would still draw at work
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because i was uh a designer i did textile design for living for a lot of brands
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but when i got home i couldn't draw so when could when um corona happened and
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we were stuck inside it brought back that creativity to me and
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i just started sketching the things that were helping me get through
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you know the quarantine so i came up with this series called quarantine bay and it literally just started with me
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doing a self-portrait of me laying down surrounded by all the things that were helping me survive
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and i posted it to instagram and people just immediately say oh do another one do another one so huh
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do you have it handy yep i want to see we want to see so this is the first one
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i'm going to hold it up to the screen and see if it'll show hold on this ring light is super bright but here we go oh
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so you can find them on my ig so that is the first one i did um and it was like a big hit
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because my instagram had been stale for a while but then i started doing and that i just started doing a whole series of
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them and i got friends were like i want you to draw me and i hadn't done
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a commission for anybody in a while and i was like i really don't want to do any commissions right now i'm just trying to work on my mental
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health and one of my friends just straight up cash at me and said you're
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you're going to draw me so i said fine so i opened up commissions and i prayed and i was like
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you know what i wasn't at the time i wasn't getting any assistance for the government or anything you know
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the stimulus all that stuff was you know i didn't get any of that um so i was like maybe if i just get
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five or six people this will help me get through the month i'll open up those commissions i got 80
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of them [Laughter] stop it i got 80 of them i think in the
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year 2020 i did oh a hundred commissions bless you
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is all of this coming from yeah they just people just love that series and i just
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didn't know i'll even show you like i can if i can scroll through like i have tons and tons
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of these all commissions these are all commissions of people that
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i drew that is amazing so yeah for you
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you had to relocate you locked you you locked down at home and doing so you got more
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your creativity came back you kind of centered yourself and then it it allowed for you to kind
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of rebirth something that you used to do had stopped doing and then it provided
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revenue it provided revenue it provided um some mental stability because i
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couldn't worry about all the time
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so it created like this mental stability and i was just working i was just working
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non-stop i was working so much that my mom we had to put an arm brace on my right hand
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um because i was constantly drawing all the time huh carpal tunnel yes yes
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that's how much i was working and i even had to get better equipment with something that
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you you would always have to like twist my arm i had to level up i just got like an
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ipad pro i had to get like this huge computer screen behind me that lets me draw directly on it
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oh my gosh i had to like level up that's beautiful so for you in this
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journey like did this so by now having like this revenue stream and having
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different more creativity moving back home re-centering yourself like what did you learn by changing your
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surroundings or what did like you know granted like you know for you your creativity sparked back up
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like what lessons did you learn either from a business side or creativity side when you came back
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i one thing that i learned was to give myself grace to give myself grace um
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and it was always like i felt like there was a time where i was in the middle of it where i was almost trying to keep up
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with other people and keep up with um what everybody else was doing and like i said ronnie did
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it's made me slow down and realize i had to go on my own pace my journey is my journey i don't have to follow at
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anybody else's pace of what they were doing um so and it also taught me to have like
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confidence in myself because i was dealing with heavy imposter syndrome like extremely heavy imposter syndrome
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and i'd realize nobody else can do what i can do so i'm the best of what i do and i don't have to like compete with so
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it's like a lot of things that it taught me and also because i was getting so many
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like you know dms and it taught me how to create like channels for people to
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speak to me so i had to create google docs and order forms and have prices and contracts and things
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that they had to sign and they would know up front in ways they could submit um their photographs to me
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you know it i had to create like this entire workflow that i didn't have before
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well first of all thank you antoinette for the
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we're here with john quell the artist the creative behind john paul art we've known her from her plus-sized
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fashion um like it's it's beyond like sketches and artwork because it's really
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a lifestyle that you've created and that you've really cornered the market in um we see the high fashion um
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but they've never included plus like you can out the gate featuring plus bodies featuring plus
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women and and men and everything uh like you know in the spectrum
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really celebrating our curves in our bodies and so with rona like it this pivot allowed for
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you to really kind of like revisit like the why of what you started like the core
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of what of what you started and it kind of reintroduced you um to all that that's mocha over there
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shaking it um so now you start like you open it up you have a hundred
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commissions like um in queue how do you feel now that you've like
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learned to give yourself grace you're stepping into reconnecting to what got you started in the first place how
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do you feel um i feel inspired more than anything
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i feel inspired i feel like there's so much more i have to say so many stories that i
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have now because um it's not just me doing fashion illustration i was like there's stories that i have to tell i want to
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show women of size living in luxury because we're not shown that way especially if we're of color the media
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definitely doesn't show us that way if we're of color so i feel like i have a job to do and it's like kind of like
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almost my responsibility to do what i can in that area so yeah i'm looking i'm looking at new ways
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to express that um different storylines i can tell things from products
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you know creating a sticker club doing keychains doing everybody wants the girls on t-shirts
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looking at stuff like that so it's like i'm getting my business in order i'm restructuring
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my business and imagining where else he could go that's beautiful i am so proud of you
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thank you you know when you find your purpose when you are inspired and you understand
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your purpose things become so laser focused and the things that you like in ins you
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know it's it's interesting because similarly to you like rona had me sit down
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strip down everything list of events planning go go go go go
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i wouldn't have been able to focus on you know why where where am i going why am i
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doing it how am i going to do it and really just hone in and hearing your journey is like kind of
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just like i it mirrors mine but it kind of also affirms me so i thank you for sharing
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that because i i did not know like that shift for you so
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with this shift like now where are you it's 20 21
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and we're in the second month of the year we're still here with the rona
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like i mean you're looking amazing i mean come on
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your jacket in your lip give us the details okay so this was from full beauty
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yeah this is years ago yes and i've had it for a while the funny thing is is that when i was
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moving down here my family was like you have to get rid of your coats because it's hot down here and i was like never
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never am i going to get rid of it and it's cold so they're knocking on my
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door can we borrow your coats i'm like are you prepared to look fabulous in these come on
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nobody out here has jackets so i i live in my coat so i'm so happy for this
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weather i hate what it's doing to the rest of us but you know i'm happy that it's cold enough that i can at least wear these
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and my you're wearing my lippy i need to
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tell you the name of my lippy eek just gave you a full shot of the paintings behind me but this lippy
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is estee lauder okay girl estee lauder lippy and it is called shocking off
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well it is working for you right i'm always weird to doing reds on
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my lips like i would rather hair like you know blushes like on the lip i
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love to go more of a vampy darker color exactly so okay
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so we've started um if you guys are just joining us i'm here with john jean-claude art she is the artist behind
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jean-paul art like you've seen her work almost everywhere whether she's been on you've gone viral on instagram on
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twitter um she's her work and we've featured her work she's done collaborations
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and we're talking a little bit about her journey and she talked about how when she moved back from new york to louisiana inspiration came back
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like work came back like kind of coming back into her own like why she got started and so
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jungkook where do you see yourself in five years oh interesting question
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because the biggest things like i thought that everything was gonna stop when rona first hit
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but actually some of the things that were on my bucket list that i thought were gonna be further down the line happen um i've been licensed by a
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company called icanvis so you can actually find my work in nordstrom's and [Music]
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so i'm very happy to continue you know that journey with them and yeah i would like to see my artwork
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in stores like when you walk through stories i want you to see it's already online but when you walk through target i want you to see my
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artwork there i want to start um probably teaching online
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um because i recently was a guest lecturer at fit
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and there were a lot of students use me yes one more time i was a guest lecturer at
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fit as the plus size fashion spokesperson wow because there are a growing number
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of young students that want to be in the plus size but there's not enough educators at this
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point that can teach them so yeah because they just got um i guess
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you would call him an ally ish person at parsons the new dean of fashion is someone who's
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champion inclusion and plus sizes in fashion and he comes from canada so i'm really excited to see
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what he does at parsons so keep going you were a guest lecturer yes so that opened my eyes what i want
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to be a lecturer i want to continue lecturing at schools and doing venues and things like continue spreading this message
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but also um teaching as well um people who are interested in learning
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plus size illustration want to be able to do plus size fashion like i'm very ready to like share what i
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have learned even you know i was self-taught in doing it but i'm at the point now that i can turn around and teach it
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girl you are killing it i hope that you are taking the time to celebrate
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yourself in these moments because oftentimes us women of color we tend to just kind of
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like blaze through and not sit and appreciate these milestones
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like these for you and i'm i'm mostly talking to myself on that
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i'll own that i know i i'm doing better but you know it's part of my journey
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right so for you like are you celebrating or how
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can you i guess the question is like really how can you celebrate but in that giving yourself grace is there
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also those celebrations or how are you celebrating yourself um one of the things is i have very good
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friends in my life who make me celebrate myself and every time they remind me to do so
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like any time i get to the point to where the oh the imposter syndrome bubbles up like oh no i can't do that and say who are you
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talking to list your accomplishments and they will make me run through my resume and even halfway through i'd be like oh wow
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i really did do all of that you know yes yes yes yes yes so then
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but so when you say celebrate can you articulate like what those little things may be that you
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do to celebrate in addition to acknowledging and verbally saying them
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i think that some of the things i do to celebrate myself well in the middle of a pandemic it might be
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just to buy myself something that i wanted that i put off for a long time i can say now that i now have like my
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dream studio which i thought would be another five years before i had it because the stuff was so expensive
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but because i you know gotten so much support i was able to buy everything that was on
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my list five years ahead of time and i know that that is still related to my
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art but i'm like i'm a geek behind art supplies so that makes me happy
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i'm so excited for you so then for if you had to give some advice
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to an aspiring artist to an artist who's like just dabbling or kind of getting familiar in
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the illustration plus size illustration space what advice would you give to them
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oh god like so i get asked this question um a lot my thing is i always tell people that
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people are interested in you they're interested in your story so find out what your unique story
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is and find a way to illustrate that and tell you know and tell it to the world so the reason why my art touches so many
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people is because it's tied to what i am not just an appearance like the idea of wanting to show women
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in such a positive light it's tied to the fact that i was bullied my whole life and i was like no we're not going
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to continue this narrative so i always tell people go back to yourself go all the way back to your childhood
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even and find what it is that makes you you and find a way to portray it in
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your work that's beautiful and i think that is akin to like the why
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like i always say what is your why so like for you it's like what it's very similar and it's that core of
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like what you're doing and why you're doing it and how you're doing it and so if people wanted to work with you
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are you still taking commissions yes my commissions are open um if you go
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to if they go to either my facebook or my instagram in the bio they can click on the link
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it's a link tree it will open up to all of these different ways that you can contact me there's order forms for commissions
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there's links to the company that i'm licensed with so you can buy canvas prints of my art there's links to
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online stores that carry my work um and my mailing list as well my
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website is on there but it's under construction at the moment because it's coming back with merchandise and i wish i wish the
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samples would have been here in time for this but i'm waiting for my samples to come in when
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they come you just drop us an email so that we can we can hear some love right i dropped it
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i dropped your instagram in the comments so if you guys are looking for information mocha
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uh honey no ma'am he's trying to bark at a truck that's
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like far away but we've dropped her link for you guys if you want to follow her you want a commission
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like the work that's behind you these are up these are things that you've already done
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like this one that's black and white behind you is there a story behind it this that one that's
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behind me there's not really a story behind it um every once in a while i would just grab
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a huge blank canvas and just unload on it i think this one took maybe three hours to
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do um and it's just a way just for me to be um be free and i won't plan out what it is i won't
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over think um i'll just go and i'll just unleash on the canvas and it just if they come out
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beautiful they get hung up if not they just go in the class right right and so with all the
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additional pieces like will your new site like well when you relaunch your website will we be
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able to literally shop some of your old work yes so the funny thing is i have so
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much work that everybody wants so i'm gonna find a way to like rotate it but i will have prints i will
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have clothing uh coffee mugs and some other things that i'm like waiting to get
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samples in from that was another thing i learned how to like talk to manufacturers in other countries
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that was a whole nother thing that's the whole real thing like yeah because now as a creative and i
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think this is like oftentimes like the challenge as creatives like we want to create but then we've learned
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the business along the way and we've made mistakes like we've you
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know like there have been big ones and small ones that we've learned and now when you're like you're like oh
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my gosh i wish i would have known how to do this or to do this first so to create this first or
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understanding the process what do you think has probably been one of your biggest uh lessons when it comes to business
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keep going even when you make a mistake like of course there are moments where i
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literally just want to go in a dark room and die or something excuse me
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what i've learned is you don't know what you don't know right you don't know what you don't know
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and if mistakes are inevitable you're going to make them and the thing is to take that mistake
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and just learn from it like every mistake that i have learned has become like a additional term in a contract or
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come on it's because it's become a different way to re arrange an order form or it's become a
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different term that would be on the website and if i hadn't made the mistake i wouldn't have known now when somebody
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comes to me i don't negotiate i know what better pricing you know i
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know that okay i may have to look talk to a lawyer about this and not you know or this needs to be further looked into but
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if you do not make those mistakes you'll know you'll never know google can only teach you so much
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so much and i have found two that after you've made the mistakes like you
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oh well i have learned that you either a learn more patience and dealing with others because like
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when you when you [ __ ] up like you realize like i didn't know this i didn't know this so now like if i'm
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engaging with someone else like i'm going to give and extend that grace because someone probably didn't know
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but also you know boundaries yeah that's probably one of the things that
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i've learned like you know learning how to stay true to your vision and not let someone else kind of deter you from
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those boundaries and and for you you also mentioned um real quick lois said that black and
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white canvas would be so cool as a graphic t-shirt oh
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i would have to agree i totally see it thank you shout out to lois thank you
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lois so i think so so then i have one other question because you mentioned that you
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were dealing with anxiety as someone who literally was dealing with high functioning depression
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and anxiety i had like i was almost five years ago i started going to therapy
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i started going to therapy unpacking didn't even realize like how i like my actions like
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either i was avoiding things because of like past experiences or i was afraid of
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abandonment because i have those issues or like all the things like you know you're
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able to kind of unpack them as someone who is admitted you know you should just share that you navigate through anxiety
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how are you processing like or what tools have you learned to help you through that also cbd is
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great um i think uh for one thing the reason i know i had is because i was in therapy
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like my therapist was like okay this is what's happening you're not crazy this is just what's happening and it's probably why
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so one of the things that it got me is that it made it very real because i think a lot of times we people are just
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oh i have anxiety and they don't realize it's a very real thing so once you know it's a real thing you can kind of come
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up with coping mechanisms to almost like work your way through them and say okay this
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is a panic attack this isn't real we can work through this you know we can
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give ourselves you know grace and then i notice that if it gets bad just stop
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if i'm able to just stop what i'm doing and then come back the world is not going to end it's like
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it's not going to end so i would just if something was causing me anxiety the best thing for me would
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be to step back from it and come back to it with a cool hand so rather it's like talking with a client and they're upset
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about something it's better for me to like give it a moment sleep on it go eat
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and rather than to just jump right back at them with that anxiety at the top i'm
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like it's just about okay let's look at this from another angle
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and that's all that's the best thing i think you know yeah it becomes like a muscle right so like the more that you you know
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practice those steps the easier you are it easier it becomes at times because
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sometimes it's it's just like just leave it alone right you're like uh shut the computer
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i'll come back to you tomorrow right right so um you know we've shared your url we've
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shared your instagram um do you have like a
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so is everything on your link tree yeah i did um everything about me is
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pretty much there i did very good with keeping everything in one place that's one thing i learned about creating channels they can contact me
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it's like everything is here right and so um remind everyone then where they can
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follow you how they can reach you and how they can connect with you okay so you can find me um
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at jungkook art everything from my instagram my tick tock my twitter and my facebook is drunkwellart and my
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website is jungle.com so if you google my name you will find
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everything um underneath my name and if you can't like i said uh all of my social media i will have a
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link tree with every place that you can find me on the internet at this point
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awesome and i mean i can't believe we've already gone through the 30 minutes right like it's gone by hella past you've been such
31:21
an amazing
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