Highlighting the different arts programs on campus, Diamond Bar High School’s USB hosted the third annual Visual Arts Week starting on Nov. 18.

The event, organized by art commissioners junior Julia Ruelas and senior Tori Kwon, was held in the upper quad, where a variety of backdrops were provided for students to take photos in front of.

Ruelas said the idea was to showcase the variety of visual art classes at school, with each day featuring a new form of art.

The chosen artwork displayed throughout the week was submitted by art teachers.

Junior Yifei Hu had her cross-hatch (shading an area with intersecting parallel lines) drawing of seashells displayed during the week. This piece was one of her projects for her AP Studio Art class.

She used a sculpture containing real seashells as a reference for her artwork, with the whole process taking her four days.

“I played around with ideas and created a unique composition with seashells,” Hu said via Instagram.

 Hu said she faced several challenges, specifically incorporating new techniques.

“This was my first time doing cross-hatching with markers [and] it was extremely horrifying,” she said. “Once a line is down on the paper, it’s there. You can’t change your mind on how that line goes.”

Contrasting the different color values (a color’s lightness or darkness) and shading were other issues for Hu. She said controlling color intensity and shading was more difficult in this piece since it was all done in marker, which is much more opaque compared to pencil.

Despite her struggles, she was thankful she tried something new.

“Nevertheless, it was a novel experience,” Hu said.

Meanwhile, junior Maya Aragon

made a painting of a man being religiously anointed (a ceremony in which oil is poured and rubbed on an individual).

Aragon’s inspiration for the piece came from her involvement in her church for the past four months.

“I do live painting at my church, so it was based on my pastor’s sermon on the anointing,” she said via Instagram.

Aragon went through a much quicker planning process for her work, simply making a rough sketch on the canvas before diving straight into painting.

“When I do these live paintings, I am usually unsure of what I will be painting,” Aragon said. “So as time went on, I was making decisions.”

She completed most of the painting at church, taking two more hours to add some final touches.

According to Aragon, her biggest challenge was the time constraint.

“Towards the end of my painting, I was running out of time and still had much to do with the background, so I tried to finish as much as I could,” she said.