Student’s graduation gift post, hand-drawn portraits of classmates, goes viral online

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Cebu City, Philippines— A graduation memoir to treasure forever.

John Paul Valencia, 18, who hails from Consolacion, Cebu and a graduate from the STEM-12 program at the University of San Carlos drew portraits of his classmates as his parting gift to his classmates turned family.

“I  want them to have a piece of memory if ever they were to look back to today. A drawing to someone can also last more and mean more than any other belongings for me” he said.

For a month and a half, Valencia drew all his 36 classmates with use of paper and a graphite pencil.

Valencia posted all his drawings on his Facebook account  last May 30, which he captioned, “USC-TC STEM-12 Block E1

These are all hand-drawn portraits that I personally made of by Blockmates in time of our graduation.

I’m glad to be a part of a unique set of people that belonged together. Amping mos college peeps hahahahaha

Yours truly, JP”.

The post has received a number of reactions and praises.

Some of the comment reads, “ Grabe gyud ka talented!! Tsada dong” and “ Talented artist JP!”.

Valencia shared to CDN Digital that he had been drawing at the early age of two years old and had not received any formal training.

“Self-taught only through trial and error lang” he said.

Although Valencia is undeniably a talented artist, he still wants to pursue his dreams of becoming a Mechanical Engineer.

As of June 2 at exactly 9:57 a.m. the post has already garnered 75 comments, 172 shares, and 629 reactions./dbs