For a group of students at Washington High School, art is a way to give back to their community.

The Honors Art III and Art IV classes recently completed a second round of murals throughout the hallways, completing a total of six murals in teams of two or three. Another group completed its own set of artwork last year.

This semester, however, was the first time the students used iPad Pros, funded through a county grant, to sketch their designs, according to 11^th-grader Andrea Griffin.

She said the teams had to pitch artwork ideas to the principal and explain its significance before being given the green light to paint the walls.

Griffin was inspired by her American history teacher Alex Heck to create an American flag mural, with a New York skyline and part of the Declaration of Independence scrawled at the top.

“It was kind of more complicated at first than we thought it would be,” Griffin recalled.

Students Nataysha Bailey, Jada Lodge and Karen Adriano decided to create a mural in the school’s special education classroom.

The mural depicts four trees, representing the four seasons, because the special education teachers use the four seasons to teach concepts, according to Adriano.

Adriano said she had never before worked with special education students, but they were able to get to know one another and even worked together on some of the painting.

Lodge, who also worked on a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mural, said the work was challenging, but for her, art is a way of expressing herself and channeling her emotions.

More importantly, it’s a way to add color to the school’s white walls and make it feel more like home for the students, art teacher Damon Walcott said.

Walcott said students have given positive feedback on the murals, and teachers are already requesting to have more painted around their classrooms.

“I hope people see them, and it will inspire them to do it,” Griffin said.