Scissors delicately cut through the paper. A sliver falls to the ground like snow slowly drifting down to earth. With each slice, the paper slowly transforms into a piece of art.

“One of my projects was on cubism, which is a chopped up style of art. My piece wasn’t going well, but I went with it and just cut it up. It turned out abstract-looking and better than I expected,” senior Thomas Jednorski said.

Throughout his experience as an artist, Jednorski has learned to “keep on painting.”

“You get into a painting or any other form of art and it may not be turning out exactly how you want to but the more you keep painting, the better it looks,” he said.

Jednorski interest in art began when he was in kindergarten. It was not until eighth grade when he started to get more serious. By high school, he was enrolled in Drawing and Painting 1 at Gilman.

Since then, he has taken a total of four years of art classes. Jednorski now takes AP Studio.

Jednorski is currently working on a wire study project with oil paints. “It’s a half skull and the other half is the muscles of the face and it’s wrapped in Christmas lights,” he said.

He started by painting the whole canvas with a base color and then wiped it down with a rag. Afterwards, he outlined the shape with another layer of paint. Now he’s filling in the rest of the painting with the main color. Once he’s finished refining the details, he will thread Christmas lights throughout the canvas.

“It’s nice to be able to see something and paint it and actually capture it in art,” Jednorski said. “It’s also fun to paint things in a different way than other people might not see.”

His preferred medium is either oil painting or sketching. “Oil painting is a very forgiving medium, and sketching can be quick,” he said.

However, he has also worked with pencil, pen, charcoal, acrylic, and pastels.

“My favorite piece of work was probably the landscape painting I did last year for a school project. It was a master copy of a landscape Cezanne did,” Jednorski said. “I thought I did very well on it. It’s the kind of style I like.”

The majority of Jednorski’s works are nature-oriented. “Landscapes encompass so much that every time I paint a landscape it’s more and more challenging,” he said.

He has a studio in his basement where he also works on his photography, which his godfather inspired him to get into in eighth grade.

“I normally paint with music, whatever music I’m in the mood for. It could be from country to reggae to rap to house,” he said.

Jednorski hopes to continue painting in college, but not as a professional career.

Sydney Setree is the Print Chief for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.