Career Day Painting Magical Portraits OPEN

As soon as Kit laid eyes on the large, broad-shouldered girl with long legs and thick arms, he was reminded of someone very dear to him who had the same features. The girl had somewhat frizzy auburn hair with waves and curls that made it difficult to distinguish between them and there were bits of leaves and twigs stuck in it. The artist found it endearing. Meeting her earnest, honey-brown gaze, he beamed at her warmly, sensing a kind, caring heart from the way she carried herself as well as her overall demeanor. She was polite, too, he noted as she opened her mouth to speak up.

"Excuse me," she uttered softly. "Do you have any tips for drawing people? I've only ever tried to draw animals before... and even that didn't go very well."

Kit chuckled and nodded, his tufted tail flicking in a feline manner behind him. "Of course!" he told her. "Actually, I've drawn and painted some magical creatures in the past, too. The trick with drawing them or humans or anything else from real life is the same, though."

Turning to show her his sketchbook, he revealed a sketch of the corridor he had been working on while not speaking to students. "Something very important my art teacher taught me," he explained, "is that when you try to draw something specific from real life - an animal, a person, or even something like an apple - you tend to draw what you think an apple should look like in your head instead of what you're really seeing in front of you."

He gestured at the corridor. "However, if you try to just concentrate on the shapes and outlines of things instead of the thing itself and what you think it should look like, you'll be able to sketch it more accurately down on paper. It might not look like what you think an apple should look like at first, but as you keep on drawing, and if you trust the process, you'll find out it looks less like a cartoony idea of what you think an apple should be drawn like and more like the realistic apple in front of you."

@Marietta Griffis, @Lenora Grace, @Kaitlyn Connor, @Rosy Parker, @Maisie Gemmell & @Ariana Slythers

mentioning ; @Kit Paine wordcount ; 321

June 20, 2026; date career day ; notes

The corridor reeked faintly of paint and parchment, the air humming with a murmur of voices. Denisse hovered at the edge of the students, her hair’s fluffy, dark tufts twitching with interest as she watched the moving portraits. One of them actually tilted its head and looked as if it were observing her. Denisse had felt a prickle of familiarity at the sight.

She listened to Kit explain the differences between enchanted, talking portraits and photographs; the subtle balance between the artist’s magic and the person’s essential essence that made one a being in its own right. Denisse had felt a thought crystallize behind her eyes. ‘Memories you can keep,’ she’d thought.

As soon as there was an opportune silence, Denisse stepped up. “Do you worry about capturing someone wrongly?” she whispered.

“If there’s something vital about them that you missed, is the portrait wrong somehow?”

Her voice was even but her expression told a much more poignant tale.

Kit’s response had been friendly, his smile wide and sincere but Denisse’s thoughts continued. She gazed around the paints and the blank canvas.

“Could I try?”

she blurted out, surprising even herself.

It had been years since she’d picked up a brush but an inexplicable urge to understand this particular craft outweighed any qualms.

Denisse was a decidedly poor painter, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, but she felt a spark of magic underneath her tentative handiwork. Katya had leaped onto the easel, studying her efforts as if she were a professional critic.

Denisse had set her brush down, her cheeks flushed a warm rose. “I’m no painter, obviously,” she’d confessed with a small, nervous laugh. “But I really like the idea of them as memories. Even if it isn’t going to be my calling.”

As Denisse stepped back, she’d felt a weight lift from her shoulders. She hadn’t discovered her career path within the art studio but she gained a new perspective.

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| Location: Hogwarts Corridors | Date: June 20^th, 2026 | Word Count: 537 | Speech | Thoughts |
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Henry had yet to develop much in the way of skill when it came to the arts. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy it; he just didn't spend a lot of time engaging in it thus far. He doodled in the margins of his notes, when his concentration wandered too far afield. However anything he created that could generously be called art primarily presented itself as a spur of the moment endeavor. And it generally only ended up happening when the muse struck the boy over the head hard enough with the inspiration stick to redirect him away from whatever else had been keeping him occupied. It was still fun whenever it happened, though - even if most of his art manifested in less than colorful ways, like a song played on the guitar or being creative with his cooking or telling a story.

So when the boy found his way into the corridors of the school on Career Day, he beamed as he saw booth bedecked with moving portraiture. Now, he'd seen magical paintings, naturally. Assuming you were in possession of a functional set of peepers, they were nigh-on impossible to miss. However it had somehow failed to dawn on the young man that creating the pieces of art was a viable career path.

The art on display today was captivating, of course. But what caught his eye even more readily was the person who was in fact the painter themself. One could assume, anyway. Henry had certainly never seen this person at the school. Or anyone quite like them... well, anywhere. He'd heard of Muggles who went all in on body modifications, but this was several steps beyond what non-magical folk were capable of. The man was in possession of cat ears and a tail, for Merlin's sake. And while he wasn't sure what to make of that, he decided it would be more polite to pay attention to the paintings, rather than gawk. He knew what it was to be self-conscious, and would hardly want to inflict that feeling on someone who'd made time to come to their school for the event.

Once he'd managed to direct his focus to the subject at hand, he found himself marveling that the artist was sketching with a muggle pencil. That was rather exciting in and of itself - things that reminded the Muggleborn of home were few and far between here. And while he himself had somewhat managed to switch to utilizing a quill like most of his peers, the colorful glitter pens he'd used throughout the year still had a place in his bag.

"Blimey, that's a sight for sore eyes." The young wizard muttered, smiling shyly to himself, before turning sapphire eyes to the moving art, "You know," He continued, once the fascinating artist had a free moment, "I'd been wondering if these paintings were alive in a way. Do they have their own memories and opinions based on whatever they experience in this form, or are those always the same as the person they're based on?" After a moment's thought, he added with a bit of a chuckle - "I imagine if I was a painting, I'd be rather afraid of fire or water damage."

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| Interacting with: @Kit Paine |
| OOC Notes: Hi Kit! |

“Do you worry about capturing someone wrongly?” a girl with fluffy, wavy black hair and dark brown, almond-shaped eyes asked. Kit regarded her round face, fair complexion, and high nose bridge, chuckling softly at her question. "Sometimes," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. "But fortunately, there are ways to fix mistakes."

“If there’s something vital about them that you missed, is the portrait wrong somehow?” he was asked by the same young lady.

"As long as you haven't finished putting all the final charms in place, it should be possible to change it and add something necessary depending on what that is," Kit answered. "Even after final charms are put in place, I like to think there's always ways to fix mistakes or things that were missed. If it was a physical feature or something that was missed with the painting, it's not too difficult to add it in. The tricky part is when what the portrait is missing is something magical and abstract, like a phrase they're supposed to say or a way they're supposed to behave."

“Could I try?” the student finally inquired.

"Sure you can!" the painter answered, gesturing to one of the blank canvases.

The girl didn't waste time in making an attempt and Kit was glad someone wanted to. Eventually, she said, “I’m no painter, obviously.” Then she added, “But I really like the idea of them as memories. Even if it isn’t going to be my calling.”

"What are you talking about? You just made a fine painting from the looks of it! What does that make you if not a painter?" he asked, beaming as he admired her work. "But yeah - that's a good way to look at it. I like the idea of magical portraits being a way to preserve memories, too. Especially those of our loved ones who we can't see anymore." Turning back to the girl, he asked, "Do you know what your calling is, then?"

A little afterward, a boy stopped by to look over the moving portraits as well. He was a brunet of average height with blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a jawline that was quite angular despite his apparent young age. Kit caught him glance over at him, but not look at him for too long - probably to be polite - and grinned at the thought. His tufted tail twitched like a feline's. It wasn't as if he'd acquired it or his ears or even his tattoos not expecting people to stare. Still, it was cute that the kid might have wanted to try to be polite anyway.

"Blimey, that's a sight for sore eyes," Kit heard him say and followed his gaze to try to figure out what he was referring to. His pencil? The paintings...?

But then he spoke up again. "You know," he said, seeming to address the professional artist directly that time, "I'd been wondering if these paintings were alive in a way. Do they have their own memories and opinions based on whatever they experience in this form, or are those always the same as the person they're based on?" Then, after a moment, he added with a slight chuckle, "I imagine if I was a painting, I'd be rather afraid of fire or water damage."

"Good questions," Kit answered. "I've often wondered similar things myself. From what I've researched and learned, only some portraits have enough magic to store 'memories' of a sort - memories they can use to act like their subject matter. Hogwarts Headmasters and Headmistresses, for example, teach and train their portraits on what to do and say to not only act like them, but to help advise the next Hogwarts Headmasters and Headmistresses to come after them. They're very specialized sorts of portraits and often can only be made because their subjects are very powerful. But in regard to their own real opinions and sentience, that is very limited. Just like how, with technology, artificial intelligence is limited to what muggles teach it."

He thought for a moment. "That does make me wonder about things like the portrait's own idea of self-preservation...but I can only guess that whatever concept of self-preservation they have would be based on whatever sense of it the artist or the person they were modeled after or both gives them. If...that makes sense."

@Marietta Griffis, @Lenora Grace, @Kaitlyn Connor, @Rosy Parker, @Maisie Gemmell, @Ariana Slythers, @Denisse De Vera, & @Henry Holbrook