Kid Art is Booming: Here's a Look at Some NFT Prodigies
They might only be 12 and under, but they are making a large chunk of money by posting their art as NFTs on OpenSea.
Does your kid like art? Is your kid good at art? Many kids are doing more than just framing their artwork in the living room. Now that digital art is becoming more mainstream due to the NFT trend, many kids (and their parents) are uploading their art to OpenSea. After the art has been (1) digitalized after painting on canvas, or (2) uploaded after exporting digital files from drawing apps such as Procreate, or (3) created by the help of a computer program to generate thousands of images for a collection - the final product, which is a portfolio of NFTs, seem to be selling at great success.
These days, kids may not have a little pig piggy bank collecting spare change like I did as a child - but may instead have a digital wallet, used for storing all of their crypto profits.
Kids can now make 6 figures overnight when they post their artwork as NFTs. This is forever changing the stereotype of kids picking art as a career to only become a starving artist. Art projects can be a lucrative path for those looking for a summer activity.
The most popular example is London-based Benyamin Ahmed’s good fortune when he launched Weird Whales with his programmer father. After learning to code when he was 5, Benyamin who is now 12-years-old, created a collection called Weird Whales on OpenSea, which made $160k in an overnight success - and at last count has made over $600k.
The collection includes 3,350 pixelated whales as NFTs. The developers of Boring Bananas gave Benyamin a Python script with a template that enabled him to generate thousands of images.
Weird Whales was actually Benyamin’s second NFT drop. The first one, which was based on Minecraft, included 40 pixelated avatars called Minecraft Yee Haa. But it didn’t do as well as his subsequent project. It’s a good thing he tried again!
Some other 12-year-olds selling NFTs on OpenSea include digital artist Nyla Hayes and her Long Neckie collection. The inspiration for the collection is her obsession with Brontosaurs.
7-year-old Emilio Barrera also has an impressive body of work that is posted on OpenSea.
You can see Emilio hard at work. He later tweeted “SOLD!!! That was so fast.”
Throughout the pandemic, Emilio had plenty of time do art. “We were like, wow! Very impressed,” his father Cecilio Barrera told The Fresno Bee. “But, as parents, you think that everything your child does is awesome.” When Emilio was 6, he sold an NFT drawing for nearly a thousand dollars, which is not bad since his medium choice is Crayola markers.
However, just like anything else, just posting your kid’s artwork on OpenSea doesn't guarantee success. But it’s worth taking a look at some current success stories to see the potential of posting digital NFT artwork on marketplaces such as OpenSea.
Don’t miss our previous coverage of Jack Horner’s Dino NFT collection here.
And our previous coverage of Procreate, an innovative iPad drawing app.