High school graduate paints portraits of classmates as graduation gift

By GMA Team

A graduating high school senior wanted to honor each of her classmates and decided to paint portraits of all 110 of them as a commencement gift.

Sofia Nielsen, an outgoing senior at Notre Dame Academy in Staten Island, New York, said she spent two months bringing her "crazy idea" to life, using photos from last year's yearbook and secretly working on portraits while FaceTiming with her fellow students.

Sofia Nielsen

Sofia Nielsen, a senior at Notre Dame Academy in Staten Island, New York, sketched portraits of 110 of her fellow graduating students as a commencement gift.

Sofia finished the project with just two days to spare. When she walked onstage to give her salutatorian speech, she told her classmates to reach under their chairs.

The fellow students gasped, laughed and then cheered when they realized what she had done.

Jan Somma-Hammel/Advance/SILive.com

Sofia Nielsen, a senior at Notre Dame Academy in Staten Island, New York, sketched portraits of 110 of her fellow graduating students as a commencement gift.

Sofia said the paintings are "a reminder that everything you have done here at Notre Dame will always be a part of you. A way to immortalize our legacy."

In the fall, Sofia plans to attend Macaulay Honors College at the College of Staten Island, where she will study nursing. She said she still plans to pursue art in her spare time and continue cultivating her budding art career.