Zoe Mellenger

Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Anthony Padnos

Mira Costa High School’s rising star, junior Anthony Padnos, has been dedicated to the art world since the 7th grade. 

According to Padnos, he sparked the interest for art after looking for hobbies to keep him busy during the pandemic. He watched many entertaining art videos to pass his time. Inspired by youtubers and social media artists he began practicing doodle art. 

“My biggest inspiration came from YouTubers who combined humor, good editing, and incredible art, which really opened my eyes to the possibilities of art,” Padnos said. “I became particularly interested in a style called doodle art, which combines doodles from your imagination into a cohesive picture.” 

Padnos now has his own handle “AnthsArt” with a significant following of over 250,000 followers and about 50 million views combined from all platforms, Instagram, Tiktok, and Youtube, over four years. He is able to create content and instructional videos focussing on doodle art, to encourage his audience to pursue art as he once did. 

“I started my journey with AnthArt to pursue a dream of posting videos online and making people happy” Padnos said. “I continue to strive towards that goal, and am looking to improve my videos, take on bigger projects, and entertain more people.”

Padnos also developed a project and was the first student submission for the South Bay Young At Art. His project “Doodle Magic” was presented to a group of Young at Art instructors  before being chosen for the 2023-2024 school year. Students and instructors love the project and continue to practice it after being taught. 

“I tend to live by the motto; ‘Do what you love and share it’, and being able to present my lesson on doodle art made me happy because I was able to share something I loved with so many people” said Padnos.

According to Padnos, by putting himself out there, he has had many interesting opportunities and partnerships, like Ohunu art supplies, reaching out to him. These partnerships have helped him supply Young at Art, teach free art classes to kids, and give kids art and school supplies to use. 

As Padnos likes to say, “making art is a process, it’s never going to be perfect, and all we can do is practice to become the best artist we can be.”