TikTok has found its modern-day Mona Lisa. If you’ve spent any time scrolling on the resurrected app lately, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen a portrait of a woman with a ponytail and … is that hyperpigmentation? She might not be hanging in the Louvre, but there’s no doubt that she and the circle on her cheek are famous. The hand-drawn sketch, which is from a minute-long video that appears to have first been posted on social media in 2019, has inspired recreations in every medium from pancakes to snowmen to tattoos. What’s going on? Here’s what to know about the years-old meme, including why it’s going viral again now and whether the young artist who made it kept drawing.
In 2019, Sonia Tiebi posted a minute-long video to social media in which she asked her daughter to show her the portrait she had been posing for. When the young artist hesitantly flipped her notepad to the camera, her mom assured her that she had never looked better and declared that the unconventional drawing was “fan-TASTIC,” despite audibly struggling not to laugh. (Her dad was … not so successful at suppressing this urge.)
One of the striking characteristics of the sketch is a filled-in circle on the cheek. Sonia asked if it was hyperpigmentation, referring to when a patch of skin is darker than the surrounding skin due to an overproduction of melanin. But after seeing her daughter’s reaction, she quickly returned to complimenting her and encouraging her to keep it up. And her explanation for the man on the other side of the room who had collapsed to his hands and knees in a fit of laughter? “Daddy don’t know what he’s doing anyway! That’s how … that’s how you say that’s a great drawing in French!”
The video has gone viral multiple times since it was first posted, including when Sonia reposted it on her TikTok account (@hotfudgesonia) in 2022. Today, the hyperpigmentation artwork is enjoying another renaissance.
Yup. The drawing has been immortalized in a variety of mediums, including cookies, cakes, and even a piñata. As of publication time, the below #hyperpigmentation compilation has 14.7 million views.
Meanwhile, others are memorizing and recreating the entire video.
The appeal of the hyperpigmentation video is pretty timeless, but its latest resurgence in popularity seems to be partly thanks to TikTok’s temporary ban in the United States, which prompted many users to revisit their favorite moments on the app. All of the reminiscing appears to have pushed the meme onto the “For You” pages of people who had either never seen it before or were thrilled to be reminded of it.
Sonia has apparently hung onto it for the past six years or so. When someone asked about the original in her TikTok comments, she replied that she still has it, adding, “It’s my favorite thing!!”
Yes. In January 2025, Sonia posted an update in a TikTok with her daughter, asking if she could share some of her newer art with us. The montage of drawings demonstrates clear technical improvement, but delightfully, the hyperpigmentation influence lives on in some more filled-in circles:
In an alternate universe, it feels like the hyperpigmentation jokes could’ve turned into a situation where the daughter felt too embarrassed to pick up her notepad or draw a circle on a cheek ever again. Instead, her mom suppressed her laughs and was supportive. And even if it was through memes online, millions of people then embraced the early iteration of what seems to have evolved into a unique signature art style.
In the first lesson of his guide to being an artist, New York Magazine senior art critic Jerry Saltz advises amateurs to not be embarrassed, noting that “art doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even need to be good.” If that sounds a little tough to internalize, just remember … even if you don’t think it’s good, it can still be fan-TASTIC.