Ariel Tejada is a celebrity makeup artist.
After getting into makeup in his junior year of high school, Ariel took some creative licenses when it came to his CV and started reaching out to photographers and models.
His ballsy approach paid off and despite being just 17 years old with limited experience, he started booking jobs fast. A lot of photographers paid attention and gave him a chance. After that he started posting his work on Instagram and direct messaging high profile influencers. His goal was just to hit them all up and see who responded.
Eventually he caught the attention of influencer and founder of Lilly Lashes: Lilly Ghalichi. After asking Ariel to fly out to New York to do her makeup, she ended up loving his work so much, that she cancelled her regular makeup artist for the rest of the week. After building his Instagram profile with other high profile influencers, Ariel caught the attention of Kylie Jenner, who DM’d him on Instagram and asked to work with him.
After that first DM, Ariel quickly became Kylie’s go-to makeup artist and the pair worked together to achieve what Ariel calls “the Kylie Jenner look”.
The foundation of her new look was the brow, which also happens to be Ariel’s trademark. When you look at his work, you can tell it’s his work by the brows.
After establishing his look with Kylie, Ariel set his sights on older sister Kim. He was doing Kylie’s makeup for a while and they were at New York Fashion Week and he knew he had to kill it because Kim was going to be there and see his makeup in person. After fashion week was over, he decided to upgrade himself for his flight home because he had worked so hard that week, and it just so happened that Kim and Kanye were on the same flight. When the plane took off he typed her a note in his phone, where he offered to do her glam and that he’d be more than happy to do it. He then acted like he was going to the bathroom and got up and gave her the phone.
She read the message, smiled and started typing. When she handed it back to him she had written that she already asked Kylie for his number. Her assistant would have then reached out to him sometime that week.
Since then, Ariel has worked with the entire Kardashian family, including Momager Kris and even grandma, Mary Jo. He states that they’re all very supportive of each other and they’re all very flexible. If Kylie needs him and Kim has booked him, they know how to figure it out.
His goal with makeup is to emphasise the best features on somebody’s face. When he does colourful looks for Kylie’s ad campaigns, she has to push him hard because he doesn’t want to do it. He wants a pretty, clean brow, maybe a little wing, or a bronzy eye, to make you feel sexy.
Despite carving his entire career through the social media platform, Ariel isn’t a fan of the Instagram makeup trend because people get carried away with very heavy everything: a heavy eye, a heavy brow, heavy foundation.
Seeing as Ariel built his entire career through Instagram, it’s no surprise that he’s a big advocate for utilizing these platforms for more than posting cute videos of your dog.
According to him, social media has become so big that unfortunately you don’t need an agent anymore, because Instagram is your agent. If you’re not taking advantage of that, you’re really losing out on something major, because what it did for him, it can do for a lot of people. You can easily earn more money posting a picture on Instagram than most people make in a regular job.
He is represented by THEPRTNRS and you can reach his agent here: Marissa@theprtnrs.com
You can also find his portfolio HERE
