Warm reds, vibrant orange, and bright yellow dominate a doodle. Silhouettes of trees and a giraffe are illustrated in the horizon, along with a dark-haired girl gazing at the viewer through binoculars as a golden-maned lion stares intently at the girl. Contrasting with all of this are the bold blue letters, spelling out “Google.”

Junior Maya Thomas was selected as California’s state finalist for the Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle titled “Roots,” which can be seen in the 2013 gallery on the website.

The theme this year for the contest was “My Best Day Ever…”.

According to Google’s Doodle 4 Google page, the contest drew in over 130,000 entries nationally, with Thomas being one of the 250 state finalists selected.

Thomas said that she found out about her win when her mother got an email a few weeks ago notifying her of her accomplishment. Thomas used colored pencil and pen as the medium for her submission.

Thomas said she thinks she will get a t-shirt as a reward for being a finalist.

“I was happy because I never expected anything to happen with my doodle,” Thomas said.

Thomas said her doodle was about going on a trip to Africa.

“Both of my parents grew up in Africa [and] I drew it when we were talking about going there to see where my mom grew up,” Thomas said. “I’d love to do that at some point.”

“I just thought the competition was a cool way to put a little bit of yourself on paper,” Thomas said.

Junior Astrid Gallagher-Holmes said that she knew that it was a popular contest throughout the country so she did not expect anybody from PHS to win.

“I’m super proud of Maya because I’ve always known she’s really good at art and this was a great way to show everybody else,” Gallagher-Holmes said.

Gallagher-Holmes said that they picked her piece because it was extremely well-drawn and was very original.

“I think they picked her piece because they thought mine was too good, and her’s was next best,” Wiebe said. “Or maybe 15th best, I don’t know. It could have been the worst, too.”

Wiebe said people will be more inspired to enter the contest now.

“I think people in future years will definitely take the contest more seriously since now people realize that it’s actually winnable by a regular person,” Gallagher-Holmes said.

The national winner was a high school student in Wisconsin for her piece “Coming Home,” depicting a day in which she is reunited with her military soldier father after his deployment. The winner received a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology grant for her school, and getting her doodle displayed on the Google homepage.