Making Magic on the Metro

Devon Rodriguez’s path to success in the art world was an unconventional one. While fellow artists gained prominence through higher education, gallery exhibitions, and awards, Rodriguez forged his way via artistic talent, tenacity, and astute awareness of social media’s rise in popularity.

Veiled with an amalgamation of vibrant and ebony illustrations and contours, and tributes of “Abuela,” “NYC,” “Pasion,” and “Amor” inked on his cuffs, Rodriguez met with the team at Inked Magazine and shared the development of his artistry, now celebrated worldwide.

Building Blocks in the Bronx

Born and raised in the South Bronx, Rodriguez’s penchant for creating art was evident even as an elementary school student. “Even since first grade my teachers would ask me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ It was always, ‘I want to be an artist.’ It was never a question of, ‘Am I going to be?’” he explained. “This is the only thing I know how to really even do or think about.”

Rodriguez’s childhood was spattered with challenges, violence, and abandonment — his father, a tattoo artist, left when he was 3 years old. At 8 years old, he graffitied the neighborhood with his friends until he was arrested at age 13. But he found meaning in the chaos through art. “I feel like as long as I focused on my art, I was able to navigate through some of the roughest areas and feel like art took me out of that,” he said.

The arrest was the defining moment when he shifted focus to traditional art forms. Initially rejected by the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, he attended Samuel Gompers High School in the Bronx for two years.

“In high school, I was all about drawing,” he shared. “After school, I would go to the Art Students’ League. I did art in school and my teacher had a club called the ‘Old Hat Club’ where we would just sit and have a student posing and we would paint the student. We would all be drawing and painting the student every single day and then after school and the summertimes, I would go to the Art Students’ League to draw nudes all day. This is all I cared about; I was so single-minded.”

Unyielding to the initial rejection, Rodriguez reapplied to the prestigious Manhattan art school and graduated in 2014. He went on to finish his schooling at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Metamorphosis by Influence

During his journey to advance his education, a new social networking platform was moving to the forefront. “My best friend Craig, who is also an artist, would tell me, ‘This new app came out called Instagram. You got to start posting your art,’” Rodriguez said. Ironically, Rodriguez wasn’t persuaded to hop on the bandwagon; he assumed “girls just post butterflies and flowers on there.” But months later, he climbed aboard and soon commissioned artworks on the social site for several hundreds of dollars per piece.

Interestingly, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown was a game-changer. “I remember during the pandemic, I started to see TikTok was blowing up,” he shared. “Everyone was stuck at home and focused on TikTok. I was like, ‘You know what? Maybe this could work for artists.’” Rodriguez posted art videos, client-commissioned portraits, celebrities, and dozens more art projects. It wasn’t until he posted a drawing of a man on the subway that his TikTok account blew up an hour later with 200,000 views. By the end of the day, he had 5 million views and 100,000 followers. The next day he posted another sketch and had 21 million views and 300,000 followers.

The simple idea of sketching passengers on the New York subway, dubbed the “Subway Series,” made the grade. Rodriguez said he believes it was the added human element — gifting a drawing to make someone happy — that launched him to stardom, not just the artwork. By taking these preconceptions head-on and revealing that humanity comes in many different forms, he found his artwork resonated on a level far beyond his expectations.

“You come to realize everyone’s just normal, right? But people see people with face tattoos and get so intimidated and they’re so afraid, and they assume that they’re like monsters or criminals or whatever,” he explained. “So, I just want to highlight people that look different than the norm and then show these are nice, normal people, and if you just sit down and get to know them or really interact with them then you would know that.”

Sense of Direction

Rodriguez’s success story is four years in and has opened doors to gallery exhibitions, competitions, and special projects. “If I was to give advice to an artist [who] wanted to become successful, I would say chase attention for your work, but it still has to be true to you because if not you’re going to burn out fast,” Rodriguez said.

For future projects, the New York City artist plans to travel and has an interview series underway where he simultaneously draws and paints his subjects during their conversations, including celebrities like Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Victoria Justice, and Joe Jonas. “I didn’t think that I would get to this point even when I’m like 90 or something, and that’s not to brag,” he said. “It’s just this is kind of weird how this all happened. And it happened so fast.”

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