January 27, 2023
Zoey Gallegos would always ask her mother as a child to buy her coloring books. She wanted to fuel her creative mind and start drawing.
As Gallegos got the books, she would color in the designs but then also replicate them in the lower corner of each page by freehand.
This passion for art has grown over the years for the Riverwood Middle School sixth grader.
This past fall, Gallegos was in Darla Hoover’s Beginning Art class at RMS. During the semester, Hoover mentioned the School Specialty/Crayola Colors of the World Contest to her class and Gallegos jumped at the chance.
“She went out of her way to do that on her own time,” Hoover said. “She put a lot of effort into it and I was really proud of her for doing that.”
Gallegos with color pencils created her piece called “A Colorful Mind”, which Gallegos described on her contest entry form as “a self-portrait of how I see myself in life”.
“What this art means to me is that people can be very creative and very colorful,” Gallegos said of her piece.
Hoover added: “It does blow me away. How she responded to the contest, what she drew, how she drew it and also all the detailed work that she did with all of the colored pencil work. She used a lot of value that sixth graders can’t usually put in their art. It was pretty impressive.”
After submitting it in December, Gallegos found out on January 23 that she had been selected as the School Specialty/Crayola Colors of the World Contest Winner.
“I was very happy and very excited,” Gallegos said about finding out that she won. “I told my parents and they were very excited for me.”
Along with her artwork being featured on websites and social media, Gallegos also received a $250 School Specialty Merchandise Certificate and a $250 prize package from Crayola. Hoover also will receive a $250 prize package from Crayola.