TARZANA : Girl Wins 3rd Place in Safety Poster Contest

Elana Rachel Azose wasn’t exactly surprised when her poster won third place for her age group in a national art contest to promote driving safety.

After all, the 13-year-old student at Portola Highly Gifted Magnet School has been an enthusiastic artist since she started finger-painting at the age of 3.

Since then, she has won numerous school-based art contests and impressed her teachers and peers with her colorful renderings.

“We’ve been framing her artwork since she was little,” said Elana’s mother, Eileen Azose. “She used to do such intricate designs in nursery school that I would carry them in my wallet.”

But when Elana found out that nearly 100,000 copies of her poster would be distributed to schools and safety specialists throughout the Southland, she was thrilled.

“It’s really neat to see people looking at my work and enjoying it,” Elana said.

Elana’s poster was chosen by the Automobile Club of Southern California out of more than 70,000 entries in the 1993 American Automobile Assn.’s 50th annual National Traffic Safety Poster Program Contest.

The bright, detailed drawing, which Elana completed in a week using pastel markers, warns drivers to use caution in bad weather. From the perspective of a driver behind the wheel, which Elana drew by sitting in her mother’s car in the garage, drivers are warned by yellow caution signs to go slow, be alert and use their headlights.

Elana, who sketches and draws whenever she has spare time, said she would like to be a fashion designer one day. “Art is just what I do,” she said. “It’s like I can look at a blank piece of paper and I can just see what to draw.”