My piece for the Like Light Through The Prism zine anthology for Pride Month.
Explanation below because it’s a bit long
I themed it around one of my favourite spirits - the Off-Season/Home/Old/Daily/whatever-you-call-them Guide, AKA Sleepy Traveller (I like to think they’re the same person!) and their cousin, Sanctuary Guide (according to Ash, that is.) for the emotional ties I have to the former and the implications of them both being magic users. It fits perfectly with the turquoise stripe meaning magic on Gilbert Baker’s rainbow flag - the stripe meanings being the theme for the zine as a whole!
There are many forms of love aside from what’s societally pushed as ‘most important’, so I wanted to express the value of familial love through this (the text being inspired by my own feelings about Sleepy too, though in different ways) and the emotions felt around a long-overdue reunion, when those you value the most indefinitely separate from you and the aches for their return, especially when that happens often.
I’ve had to deal with a lot of loss of sorts over time, including losing contact with people that I know understand and accept me the most, especially as a queer person. This is to honour all those lost bonds, and ones that reform despite it all, and ones that never do.
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That aside, I hope you enjoy this piece! My first big one on a drawing tablet too. Had a lot of fun figuring it out, and the payoff was very worth it.
Fun fact, I played trombone for the marching band when I was in high school. Wearing this hat just hits me with a wave of nostalgia & I am loving it! Hopefully I’ll have enough tickets for the saxophone 🎷 by the end of Days of Music.
