More than flowers are blooming in Sandra Dunn’s art room at Eisenhower Middle School.

Her students are blooming as well as they inspect the vases of sunflowers set before them. Their assignment: to interpret and draw what they see.

“I want them to notice the shape and emotions. Sunflowers are cheerful. I want them to notice beauty in nature,” Dunn said.

Students were not limited to drawing an exact replica of the vases of sunflowers that proliferated the room; they were encouraged to draw a loose interpretation.

“I encourage that. I don’t want them to feel right or wrong,” Dunn said. “You will find what interests you in your flowers.”

Dunn, who gathered the sunflowers from her yard and from the wild, said she first did this project seven years ago.

“It’s time to do it again,” she said of the assignment, which was given on the fourth day of school. “This is my bait to just get them interested in art.”

Dunn first captivated the students’ attention by talking about the color, texture and life cycle of the sunflowers. And of course the seeds in the heads of the flowers themselves.

Aurora Gauthier, seventh grade, noticed all those things and more.

“There is a lot of wildlife on it. I found two tiny black bugs and a bunch of ants,” she said after closely inspecting the vase of flowers in front of her. The ants were faithfully depicted in her finished drawing.

Once the students had viewed their bunch of sunflowers from all angles, they did a pencil sketch of what they wanted to draw before using water colors to bring their drawing to life.

Trinity Cochran-Lyles, eighth grade, did not have a sunflower in front of her station.

“I’m just looking at everyone else’s. I’m just imagining it and drawing it,” she said. “I didn’t want to add the vase because I felt like it would mess it up. I don’t know how to draw a vase and I don’t have the right colors for a vase.”

It was the first time Landon Steinbroner, eighth grade, had taken an art class, although he enjoys drawing.

“I just want to get good at drawing,” he said. “I’m just doing a little trio right now. There is one big one, not a lot of leaves on it. One is not budding yet and one is dying.”

Serenity Colbert-Whitelow, seventh grade, said the assignment caused her to focus on the details.

“It has a lot of details I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t done this project. A lot of leaves have holes and rips in them. The flower had a lot of different dots in it,” she said.

Colbert-Whitelow was mixing some of her watercolors to get just the right green for the leaves.

“I thought if maybe I could mix some colors, I would get the green I wanted. It’s making kind of a light green,” she said as she swirled paint colors around.

Because fresh flowers have a shelf life, students were encouraged to finish their projects by the time class was over.

“I want you to capture it in one setting. Tomorrow these flowers will look different,” Dunn said.