Although she is a new student, Pascack Valley senior Celeste Castro has already made her mark on the school by illustrating manga-inspired murals on the library whiteboard. 

“Around the second week of school… I was in the library just chilling, waiting for lunch, and I got really bored, so I pulled out a picture on my phone [to draw],” Castro said. 

This first mural depicted a character from a panel from a manga comic book series called Chainsaw Man. According to Castro, she spent one hour and fifteen minutes on the piece. Since then, she has created another large mural inspired by Chainsaw Man characters and various smaller doodles. 

“My qualification [for a mural] would be if it took me more than like 15 minutes, if my arm hurts at the end, and if I can step back and look at it and I feel like it’s like a real thing,” Castro said.

Castro’s smaller drawings are original characters that she created for a graphic novel she is developing. Castro has been working on the book since late 2020, during the COVID-19 quarantine, and hopes to publish the first chapter in November. 

“It’s actually a dystopian graphic novel, and it’s basically going to be about an immortal city of sorts that’s being used as a science experiment to figure out immortality,” Castro said. “It goes off of different characters who are affected by this whole thing.” 

After the first mural’s completion, Castro received positive feedback from her peers.

“People were asking to take photos of it. They were asking me how long that took me. They were telling me it was really good, stuff like that,” Castro said. “It feels nice.”

Senior William Bramley frequents the library and looks forward to seeing her work.

“It is such a joy to see what she draws on the board,” Bramley said. 

Looking to the future, Castro plans to create more drawings of original ideas, as well as those based on comics or manga she had read. Castro is drawn to manga for a few specific reasons.

“I like the actual way they style the panels,” Castro said. “I think it’s just the way that they use three point perspective, like I really love it. That one panel [from Chainsaw Man] really drew me to draw it because of the structure of the entire thing.” 

As a new student, Castro says her drawings have aided her adjustment to the new environment.

“It’s been pretty fun,” Castro said. “It’s a good way to kill time, and I got to talk to a lot of [new] people.”

According to Castro, she was unable to make similar murals at her old school due to strict rules regarding use of whiteboards. She recalls a member of an art group was punished for drawing on whiteboards.

“I wouldn’t call it a movement, but it became a whole thing where [the art group] would draw on whiteboards, and they’d just leave it there,” Castro said. “They would make these giant murals to make it more difficult for other people to ignore or just look away from.”

No matter where she attends school, art has always been a part of Castro’s life. She has been drawing for “as long as I can remember.” 

“I think I started drawing when I was a baby, when I was a kid, but I started taking it seriously when I was 10 or 11,” Castro said.

According to Castro, her favorite medium is paper and pencil, but she also enjoys drawing on a tablet. She is currently a student in PV’s AP Studio Art class where she creates projects with new themes. Below are some of her pieces.