There wasn’t anything wrong with the electricity in the classroom — they just needed the lights off to be able to see their work.

The students have been using special paints that react to ultraviolet light. In other words, their finished paintings will glow in the dark.

Sitting next to a blacklight to help see the paints’ glowing properties, students worked on their masterpieces featuring everything from jellyfish to portraits to landscapes and more. The seven students in Miller-Clay’s Painting II class are working with UV-reactive oil paints.

“They did the painting with regular oils, and then they use the UV paint as a kind of highlight to bring out what they want to glow,” she said.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert Fort Dodge Senior High junior Haevyn Myers works on a painting using UV-activated paint in Deidra Miller-Clay's advanced painting class on Wednesday afternoon.

In the Painting I class, students are working with UV-reactive acrylic paints.

On Wednesday, senior Grace Tolliver was putting the final touches on her glowing jellyfish in the advanced painting class. Using bright pinks, oranges and blues, she brought the jellyfish and its natural bioluminescence to life.

Across the room, sophomore Ava Sells was focusing on her painting of a parrot, using an image on her phone as reference for sketching and painting the base colors.

“I thought it was bright and colorful so I wanted to do a really cool painting,” she said.

Sells said the UV paints are a unique way to give details in the painting more dimension and depth. She said she plans to highlight the parrot’s feathers in her painting.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert Fort Dodge Senior High sophomore Ava Sells works on her painting of a parrot in Deidra Miller-Clay's Painting II class on Wednesday afternoon. Once the base painting is completed, Sells will use UV-reactive oil paints to highlight the bird's feathers.

The UV painting project gave junior Haeven Myers an opportunity to revisit an unfinished piece of her art.

“I think it’s really fun,” she said. “It’s definitely a new way to go about oil painting.”

Myers said she had a painting she had made her freshman year featuring a large flowering tree on a floating island, but lost it, so she started it again her sophomore year, but never finished it.

“I decided to retry it, adding different things like a second island and then a waterfall,” she said. “I thought it was really pretty and I’ve always been inspired by really pretty cherry blossom trees and I’ve always loved to draw water and stuff.”

One of the islands has a waterfall flowing off of it and Myers used the UV paints to highlight the movement of the water.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert FDSH art teacher Deidra Miller-Clay shows off one of her paintings she created to inspire her Painting I and II students to use UV-reactive paints to make their paintings glow.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert Fort Dodge Senior High senior Grace Tolliver uses UV-reactive oil paints to highlight parts of her jellyfish painting in Deidra Miller-Clay's Painting II class on Wednesday afternoon.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert Fort Dodge Senior High junior Samara Taylor works on a painting in an advanced painting class on Wednesday. Once she finishes with the base painting, she will go over the painting to highlight parts with UV-activated paints.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert Students in Deidra Miller-Clay's Painting I class at Fort Dodge Senior High are creating paintings using acrylic paints that react to UV light to glow.