MONMOUTH – When Heather Leonas began her award-winning drawing – using an X-acto knife to highlight the clay features of a boy’s face – she’d never tried the technique before.

“I wasn’t really sure how it was supposed to turn out,” said the Monmouth Academy sophomore, who began the drawing in the third week of her school year.

However, the expressive image touched people.

“Every man who sees it says, ‘That’s how I looked as a boy,'” said Leonas’s mom, Lisa Cote. Heather, 15, describes the Rockwell-like sentimentality as “classic.”

The image, named “Simon,” will soon take her to Carnegie Hall.

In December, art teacher Elizabeth Sokoloff entered the drawing into the nationwide Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

In January, the drawing by Heather, and another by sophomore Maggie Maberry, won prizes.

Sokoloff was proud of both girls’ work, so when Heather’s portrait earned a nomination for a national-level American Visions Award, the teacher sent the drawing. But then she forgot about it.

“I’ve been submitting for years,” said Sokoloff, who has worked at the small high school since 1995. “We’ve never gone to the national level before.”

Each previous time, the artworks had been returned with a polite note of thanks for entering, she said.

Not this time.

The first notice that things were different arrived via e-mail to Cote and Sokoloff.

The teacher almost deleted the message as spam. It carried a “congratulations” subject line and came from something called “A&W General Information.”

“To me, A&W means root beer,” she said.

She clicked on it anyway.

Heather won an American Visions Award. Her drawing will hang at Scholastic’s Alliance Gallery on Broadway in Manhattan and later become part of a traveling exhibit.

On Thursday, June 14, she’ll be among honorees at the gallery opening. And on June 15, she’ll join the other national winners at Carnegie Hall.

Last year’s event drew celebrity presenters including Glenn Close and Kathy Bates, a spokeswoman for the contest said Tuesday.

The hoopla is still sinking in with Heather. She got her first inkling of its importance when she told her mom.

“She flipped out,” Heather said. “She called, like, everyone.”

The contest has helped Heather become more focused and confident in her work, said her mom.

“She’s found a place where she fits in,” she said.

Heather’s work and attitude toward art is a kind of “perfect storm” mix of raw talent, hard work and a willingness to be taught, Sokoloff said.

“She’s a student,” she said. “She knows I can teach her more.”

And she’s also become an example for other students in the school, that a national prize need never be unattainable.

“This is a tiny school in Maine,” Sokoloff said, sitting in her basement classroom. “(But) these pieces that we make in this little room can go anywhere.”