Junior art major, Gracie Morris, recalled a project from her freshman year in which their task was to find an object and paint it at two different times of day.
The class, 2-Dimensional Design, gave students ultimate freedom about which object they could choose and what times they could portray it.
Morris found her subject — a silver and blue fire hydrant located behind Braniff — and started painting. Using acrylic paints, she focused on the same object, but took note of how the lighting changed its color at 5 o’clock in the evening compared to 3 o’clock in the morning.
The process, which included taking color samples on-site for a few days before painting the pictures off-site, spanned over two weeks.
“This was one of the assignments I enjoyed painting the most because I enjoy the medium itself. I’ve been a face painter at Six Flags, so I’ve had experience using paint, but being able to learn how to use them in a traditional sense has been really cool,” Morris said.
She added that it took many late nights of catching every detail, but eventually, her hard work paid off, and she found joy in this simple assignment.
Morris has always enjoyed this medium of art and boasted about the Art and Architecture of Rome Course, which helped her realize a dream of becoming an architect to design churches.
“I enjoyed going to Rome for the sake of looking at the architecture of these beautiful churches, so ideally I’d love to create [that style of] churches in the US.”
For Morris, her art classes, including painting, have helped her find her purpose in the art field as she looks forward to combining both her passion and experiences into her future work.
