DECATUR - A couple of cartons of eggs sit on a table in the Lutheran School Association's art room, the kind of eggs anyone can buy at a grocery store, except these have been decorated in bright colors and intricate designs.

The artform is call pysanky eggs, of Ukrainian origin, which uses a dye and wax process. Students and LSA are learning this process from artist-in-residence Al Bardeleben, thanks to a grant from the Decatur Area Arts Council.

Bardeleben is self-taught, having discovered the artform in a National Geographic publication in 1973, when he was in high school. He didn't have the proper tools or detailed directions at first.

"We didn't have Google then," he said with a grin, but he figured it out enough to get started until he could find more information and the right tools.

Students created designs on paper first, then on Tuesday, they practiced drawing designs onto eggs with a kistka, a brass tool first heated in a candle flame and then dipped in beeswax. Pysanky art uses fresh eggs kept at room temperature, so they have to be handled very gently.

After the design is applied, the artist paints the egg, covering each color with wax to preserve it before moving on to the next color, so by the time the artwork is finished, the egg is all black from the layers of wax. Then you melt off the wax by holding the egg in the candle flame, and until then, you don't know exactly how the egg will turn out.

Maddy Brown, working on a sort of starburst pattern, said pysanky was a refreshing change from their usual art classes.

"We've been doing a lot of just drawing," said tablemate Tyler Taylor.

Besides learning how to perform this kind of art, Maddy said, the students are also learning religious symbolism. A characteristic of pysanky is that the designs on the eggs are usually religious in nature - sunbursts, flowers, butterflies, crosses - all of which have Christian significance.

"Mr. B has done this many years," art teacher Gayle Sablotny said. "When his kids were in school (at LSA), they gave them to us teachers as gifts, Easter gifts or Christmas gifts. And we were talking, wouldn't this be a wonderful thing for the kids to do, something different and new?"

Because it's a very messy business, students brought a change of clothes and old shoes to class so they wouldn't ruin their good clothes.

"I think this would really capture somebody's imagination," eighth-grader Breanna Stubblefield said.

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