❝ Sketchtember "Now"



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inspiration SSRPG character Victor García Massey (sweetpinkpixie)
materials Ohuhu brush tip markers, copic fine inking pens 0.3, white uni-ball signo pen um-153

[how it started] Abandoned as a child and thrown into the system from a very young age, Victor grew up without attachments to any one place while also being in love with cities and places he had never been to. Born in Spain but eventually making his way to America where he found some semblance of stability in a group home. A Thunderbird with a restless heart and spirit, he dropped out of Ilvermorny and packed everything he owned into a backpack and took off into the world and wandered wherever fate seemed to want to take him. Everywhere he traveled, he was sure to leave some memory of the location on his bag whether that be a patch from the area or a local textile from it. Over the years, these mementos became necessary to fix up all the wear and tear his backpack endured from his travels and very little of the original material of the bag remains. For nearly two decades, his entire life was contained in this backpack that he never unpacked and only took out of it what he required in the moment. Not knowing where he came from and feeling no desire to become attached anywhere, Victor lived exclusively in the present - the past was over and the future would get here whenever it got here - and would only stay in the same location for a few months, the most a year, and then move on to somewhere else and adapt to his new environment.

Victor being assigned the prompt of 'now' was an incredibly emo assignment. His backpack being a literal map of everywhere he had been up to now was an easy association. It is more than just a record leading to the present and it along with its contents a sort of physical manifestation of 'now' and was utilized in whatever means necessary to deal with the present as well...like using it as a pillow while sleeping on the ground and benches due to having no where to call home, not enough money to pay for somewhere to stay, or simply being off the beaten track so far that there were no other options.

What is especially emo is that now, in the current timeline, after being consumed by his wanderlust the majority of his life and after tipping over into his 30's...is that he had finally found somewhere (rather, someones) who he has made a home in and there are attachments to places and people (Stemp House, its residence, its staff, and his girlfriend) that have encouraged him to reflect and let go of only living in the present so he can consider the future. Just this last IC year he, for the first time since he was 10, unpacked his backpack of almost everything (some things were still kept in there - old habits and all that) and did not feel the itch to just take off and remake himself somewhere else. He likes where he is...and thinks about his future with what he has and what he wants - which is a WHOLE other little emo spiral

I am particularly proud of how the weathering look on the bag turned out with the various shades of brown mixed in with some gray tones. It could use a lot more (this bag has been THROUGH it) but I was getting worried about the paper being able to take on more of the ink and still blend nicely. It has really been a lot of fun experimenting with using grays to create other shades and effects