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When Georgiana Bart’s art students were hanging their recently drawn murals on the walls at Barnes & Noble Wilkes-King’s Bookstore last week, two of them commented on how much their replicas of Vincent Van Gogh’s work looked like the originals while still capturing each student’s individual style.

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King’s College art teacher Georgiana Bart encourages her students to think outside the box when drawing or studying art work. Her current drawing class has two large murals on display at Barnes & Noble Wilkes-King’s Bookstore for the holiday season.

AIMEE DILGER photos/THE TIMES LEADER

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‘Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ is one of two murals the students in Georgiana Bart’s drawing class at King’s College produced. These days, it’s on display at Barnes & Noble Wilkes-King’s Bookstore on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre.

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“I try to give them projects where they can use their imagination,” Bart, who teaches the beginner-level drawing class at King’s College, said.

“You can take the actual picture and compare (it to the murals) and they look similar,” 20-year-old Angela Wagner of Dallas said of the class’s piecemeal enlargement of Van Gogh’s “Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear.”

As a homework assignment, the 13 students, using charcoal and white pastel, each drew a part of “Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear” and “Starry Night,” two of the post-impressionist’s most well-known works.

“This semester these kids are just so talented,” Bart said. “I think (the murals are) beautiful.”

For all the hard work and creativity the students invested into the project, Bart thought it only fitting to put the works on public display, so she contacted the bookstore.

“(They) were all for it,” Bart said, explaining her students also have exhibited small black and white and color drawings there.

The murals are expected to hang on the bookstore’s walls throughout the holiday season.

“Hopefully this is just the beginning of the work we’re going to do with that art class,” said store manager John Chaump. “It’s nice to look at something different on the walls.”

Nineteen-year-old Jordan Jiunta of Dallas drew a portion of the mural with one of Van Gogh’s eyes but didn’t compare his contribution with its counterpart, drawn by 28-year-old Kieran McMahon of Wilkes-Barre. They wanted to see the contrasts between each, he said.

“You can see everyone’s own interpretation,” said 30-year-old Anthony Turco, a customer spotted admiring the art on a recent weekday afternoon. “I think (the murals) look great.”

“Basically what I try to get across to them is the divergent kind of thinking,” Bart, a member of the Wyoming Valley Art League, said.

To 22-year-old Claude O’Connor of Moscow, that means “not just looking at something as one color or one shape.”

Classmate Lew Snover, 21, of Hackettstown, N.J., agrees, and says it’s about “how to look at art with a different perspective.”

Chaump said he’s been hearing customers and employees comment on the work.

“A lot of people have asked what it was, and when I told them it was student artwork they were pretty impressed,” he said.