Culture Student artwork featured in Day of Thanks

By Erin Osborne Collegian Reporter

This year’s Day of Thanks artwork will feature original designs by nine students.

“God is creator and allows us to be creative as well,” said sophomore and artist Caris Fickensher. “We should be thankful for that.”

Nine students won the Student Activity Board’s contest to submit artwork for the cards, including seniors Olivia Burke, Hannah Cheng, and Allison Dillow; junior Ingrid Dornbrier; and sophomores Lydia Colby, Isabella Dix, Caris Fickenscher, Rachel Hintze, and Emma Osborne.

Fickenscher and Osborne collaborated to submit one card design to SAB, based on the concept of a fall harvest.

“We helped each other with our own ideas, and then somewhere along the line decided to do it together,” Osborne said.

The two were inspired by fall and the way that their homes look during Thanksgiving.

“When I am at home in the fall, I see the leaves and ravens everywhere,” Osborne said. “My family and I normally hang up corn stalks for decoration, and there are always a lot of berries on the trees, so we tried to show that.”

Dividing the work, Osborne sketched the bird and laurel wreath, with Fickenscher contributing the color and calligraphy.

Fickensher described using watercolor pencils to create a smooth, blended image. All in all, the design took about two hours to complete.

“We sat at a table while doing homework, and I would work on the colors as Emma sketched, and then we passed the card back and forth,” Fickenscher said.

Despite being newcomers to the Day of Thanks submission process, Fickenscher and Osborne were excited to share their creativity with others.

“I love being thankful for the gifts that God has given us and being able to share that with other people,” Fickenscher said. “The cards provide a neat way to pass on thankful - ness.” Senior Hannah Cheng also used hand lettering on her card design, and made her own font in the process.

“It’s just words, but I used a humanist font that was inspired by a broad nib calligraphy style,” Cheng said. “I love fonts, and kept blending them together until I found something that I liked.”

Cheng first drew her design on paper, and then added a background on Photoshop.

“It looks very clean and digital,” Cheng said. “I decided to use fall colors as my background, since it drew more attention to the shapes of the letters rather than distract from it with backgrounds or textures.”