9-year-old Ruby Wang holds up her drawing that won the Nevada finals for the Doodle for Google national contest Monday June 10, 2024.
Sunday, June 16, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Vibrant orange, yellow, blue and green colors flow across a page filled with birds soaring above the fish-filled ocean.
Inside one of the fish is a bookshelf filled with literature, a few bright-green plants and a television with the Hello Kitty characters Kuromi — a white rabbit dressed in a black jester’s hat – and Cinnamoroll, a white dog with long ears.
Peeking out of the top of a bird is a woman with long, dark hair, watching the sunset from the top of what artist Ruby Wang called a “hideout.”
But some of the birds aren’t birds, and some of the fish aren’t fish — they’re homes in a future where sea levels have risen due to glaciers that have melted as a result of climate change. It’s a reimagined future from the mind of Wang, 8, who was Nevada’s winner of Google’s 16th annual Doodle for Google competition.
“I didn’t think that she could be the state winner,” Ailing Wang, Ruby’s mother, said of her daughter. “(But) she has so many ideas … I think she’s very creative.”
Wang beat out “tens of thousands” of applications from students across the United States and its territories, officials said.
Doodle for Google, which started in the United States in 2008, is an annual art contest for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Children can submit one original artwork based on a prompt that Google releases each year, with the art incorporating the letters “G-O-O-G-L-E” in any form. Artificially-generated art is not accepted, but students can get creative with their medium and submit everything from a painting to stop-motion video or virtual reality creation.
This year’s prompt: “My wish for the next 25 years…”
Ruby Wang answered the call with “Swimming and Flying Houses,” a drawing where people “live in a fish-shaped house under the sea, or a bird-shaped house in the air” due to sea level rise.
The rising third-grader was inspired by the problem of melting glaciers, which she had learned about in one of her science classes at John W. Bonner Elementary School in Summerlin.
Winners of the competition receive company swag along with other big prizes. In Ruby Wang’s case, she was given a Chromebook, a shirt with her artwork printed on it and a small celebration to show off her winning artwork, she said.
“We encouraged students to try new mediums and think outside of the box — and that creativity shone through in the tens of thousands of submissions we received,” the company said in a blog post about the competition. “There were wishes for a healthier planet, lasting connections with friends and family, space exploration, dream jobs, technological advancements and medical breakthroughs.”
When Google put out the call for submissions, Ailing Wang never imagined that a simple advertisement on her Instagram feed would lead to big things for her daughter. It was “a good opportunity for them to think and be creative,” said Ailing Wang, who saved the submission information and passed it around to the students at her school – Ruby included.
Ruby Wang has been drawing for almost two years, starting as a passion project to stave boredom and keep her off the iPad, said Ailing Wang. The 8-year-old likes to express her feelings through her art – which is not just limited to the paper, but also manifests in originally-designed petite dresses that Ruby Wang uses to dress up her dolls.
The walls inside Ailing’s Art Studio are lined with brightly-colored paintings from Ruby Wang and her 5-year-old sister, who recently started art classes. A simple, four-legged table sitting next to the front entrance of the small school located at 3400 West Desert Inn holds various clay statues created and painted by students.
Ailing Wang, who creates and sells jewelry, opened the art studio in an empty part of her husband’s office when her older daughter began taking an interest in drawing but was lonely sketching by herself.
The Wangs now hang out with about 30 students a week, with Ruby Wang putting in two hours of crafting every a few times a week when she’s not at school or doing gymnastics training.
It took Ruby Wang a week to draw and color her entire piece, only getting mom’s advice on small details like the best colors to match, Ailing Wang said.
“Icebergs are going to melt and there’s gonna be no more land,” Ruby Wang said of her drawing. “(So) I just thought of birds and fishes.”
When Ailing Wang got the call from Google that her daughter was the state winner for Nevada, she thought it was a scam at first, but it became “surreal” once the news settled in.
For Ruby Wang, winning simply made her happy, she said, especially now that she has a Chromebook to help her with preparing for end-of-year testing at school.
Five of the 55 finalists were chosen to contend for the national title in an announcement made by Google on June 10. Ruby Wang was not one of them.
But that won’t stop her from doing what she loves. Ailing Wang said she won’t push her daughter to enter more competitions, but if Ruby Wang is interested, then they’ll try again.
Since submitting her Google doodle, Ruby Wang has already moved on to her next projects, including a sunset scene dappled in yellows, oranges and reds as well as an ink drawing of the Eiffel Tower that she completed just from studying a reference photo.
She doesn’t know how long she’ll keep drawing, but as long as she has time for it, Ruby Wang said, you can find her in mom’s studio.
“I think she will just keep drawing because I think art will make you be a more creative person,” Ailing Wang said. “I just think as long as she likes drawing, I will continue to encourage her to draw.”
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