After a panel of judges from all over the city judged different art pieces for the Scholastic Art and Writing competition, they announced the winners on January, and had an awards ceremony on Friday, Feb.1. Four Mac students won Gold Key recipients, four won Silver Key recipients, and fourteen were honorable mentions.
“I think all the MacArthur students did great,” art teacher Mrs.Barajas said. “We had the longest list of winners we’ve had in quite a few years, so it was pretty awesome.”
Senior Alexandra Jauregui won Gold Key Recipient for two of her artworks. One was of her cat that passed away, and she made it with white charcoal. The other one was a portrait of her niece made with oil pastels.
“It was my first time seriously working with oil pastels, so it’s pretty cool that got a gold key,” Jauregui said.
Junior Heather Green also won Gold Key. Her winning piece was a drawing of her friend’s dog. She drew it in a geometric style using color pencils on black construction paper. She said it was her goal to win Gold Key since last year she won silver key after taking her first art class.
“I was kind of surprised, but at the same time I felt like it was well deserved because I did work really hard on it,” Green said. “I put a lot of hours into it.”
Green had to find ways to blend twelve colors into different shades for her artwork to pop.
“My teacher gave us a couple of shortcuts and tricks we could use,” Green said. “She showed us how we could use a white color pencil to blend colors together and give it a smeared look which is what I did for the drawing, and I felt like it helped a lot. All the colors transitioned really nicely.”
Sophomore My Le won Silver Key. He drew his best friend from Vietnam with watercolors.
“I didn’t think of [winning],” Le said. “I just wanted to show my art. This is the first year I live in this country, so I wanted to join a competition, and winning it totally surprised me.”
