For the first time ever, students in Art 2 are creating larger-than-life photorealistic paintings of gemstones in order to learn more about color theory. Students will be sketching, tracing, and painting their gems through an expected deadline of Jan. 29.

“The end goal of this project is for students to learn about color theory, how colors work together, how to use color in painting, how to mix colors, how to create tints, and shades and tones,” art teacher Emily Delarios said. “And then how to color match by looking at a reference image and finding how to make those colors so that they’re the same.”

Students can then apply the color theory skills they develop through this project to art pieces later on.

“It helps a lot with understanding reflections and how colors interact with each other,” sophomore Morgan Conner said. “It also helps us work on color matching and understanding the process of making colors.”

Faceted gemstones, with their multiple shapes, also allow artists to work on photorealism and the abstract style simultaneously. This makes the project more appealing to a wider variety of art students on campus.

“When you zoom in on the gem, it looks abstract because of all the different shapes,” sophomore Vivienne Haggard said. “When you zoom out, it looks like a much larger version of the photo. It’s super cool, and more people like it because it’s not focusing on just one style of art. It also helps those of us who want to learn more about these styles, and I just think that’s just such a unique opportunity.”

Depending on the success of this project, faceted gemstones could become a staple in Liberty Art for years to come.

“Typically, in the past there’s always kind of a decision you have to make on how to teach color theory because the easiest thing is to do a color wheel, but we’ve all done color wheels before,” Delarios said. “And so this is sort of a new approach that I’m trying this year, where we’re really learning the same things, but it’s in a cooler format, I guess you could say.”