From the small margins of her notebooks, Megan Lee’s doodles have found a new home in a published book. Over the summer, the Diamond Bar High School junior contributed over 40 illustrations for a poetry book.

The book, “The Identity of the Heart: A Collection of Poetry and Artworks for All to Enjoy,” was written by Bowen Shen, a Walnut High School senior. Lee and Shen attend the same SAT prep school. The tutor, knowing of Lee’s artistic talent, recommended that Shen have Lee illustrate his book. The book includes around 300 poems about a high school student’s daily life, depicting the roller coaster of feelings experienced throughout junior year.

Along with Lee, juniors Kristine Tu from Glendora High School and Selena Shi from Walnut High School collectively worked together on the book’s illustrations.

Lee drew and designed the book’s cover and illustrated a majority of the poems. She began illustrating in May and had to draw 14 pages a week. Each illustration, in black and white, took approximately 20 minutes to ink and draw. Her pictures were later scanned and added into the book’s pages.

“It was cool how a drawing can portray the meaning of a poem.”

Although the book was a collective effort, the illustrators and authors spent most of their time working independently.

Furthermore, since there were multiple artists working on the project, there is a variety of drawing styles present in the book.

“Megan drew simplistic yet beautiful depictions based on how she felt when she viewed the poems. Kristine also drew them from her own unique perspective, but their art styles differ, so hers is a bit more realistic,” Shen said.

The self-taught artist enjoys drawing basic cartoons and doodles, she describes her drawing style as simple, quirky and cute. Occasionally, she draws editorial cartoons for the school’s newspaper.

“[Working for] Bowen was different because I had less ideas. [The Bull’s Eye] usually gives me ideas on what to draw,” Lee said. “For articles you portray facts in a more comical way, but for the poems, I had to figure out what it meant by myself.”

The paperback book was finalized in July and has been available on Amazon since September.

Lee was first inspired to draw after seeing her family friend’s drawings. She began copying her friend’s style of art and doodling in middle school. Her favorite artists include Marc Johnson and other online artists.  

Despite her artistic hobby, Lee is not in the school’s art program. Instead, she is taking the advanced architecture class, where she hones her designing skills and creativity.

She plans on pursuing architecture in the future with drawing as a side hobby.