ZEBULON — While most kids are playing video games in their spare time, Muhammed Ibrahim, 10, googles art contests and enters them for fun.

The fourth-grader at Wakelon Elementary School has entered at least seven contests in the last year. Ibrahim has placed in many of them — the latest sponsored by the National Korean American Education and Service Consortium.

Ibrahim was one of four student artists in his age group selected to fly to Washington, D.C. for an expense-paid trip during the inaugural week to see the exhibition of 61 artists, including himself. About 400 artists entered the contest, said L. Sookyung Oh, Immigrant Rights Project Coordinator for the consortium based in Los Angeles, Ca.

There will be two shows — Friday in the Rayburn Building, the office building of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Janurary 26-28 in Union Station.

The show’s theme is “Americans Future Starts with Healthy Children,” part of the consortium’s promotion of health care for all children, Oh said.

“I think it (art) is a very enjoyable thing to do, said Ibrahim, “It’s cool to look at, and you can share it with others.”

Wakelon Elementary School art teacher Janice Wroblewski said she wasn’t surprised when she heard Ibrahim won the latest award. She said he was creative and a hard worker.

Ibrahim’s approach to art, is to create tight images rather than loose – “an M.C. Escher as opposed to a Van Gogh,” said Wroblewski. “He’s very meticulous. He takes his time,” she said. “He’s very attentive and wants to learn how to make his art better.”

Part of his interest in finding contests comes from his father Muhammed Amjad, a Pakistani immigrant with a master’s degree in regional planning and environmental engineering from Tokyo University in Tokyo, Japan. He owns a gas station in Wilson and is also a mosaic artist and volunteer at the N.C. Museum of Art.

Amjad is not without his own awards.

He won a lifetime volunteer award at the museum and had his mosaic work exhibited there for a day.

“He (Ibrahim) needs some guidance because he always likes to play computer games,” Amjad said. “I asked him, ‘Why are you playing when you can search for art competitions?’ ”

The competition search started after Amjad and Ibrahim were at Ibrahim’s art exibition at the East Regional Library last year. Amjad met the father of one of the boys whose work was in the show. He told him that you could do a search on Google for “kids art competitions” and find many of them.

The two took the information seriously and Ibrahim has entered countless contests.

“I do it in my free time,” said Ibrahim. “I don’t know how many I’ve entered. Dad fills out the forms and I help by telling him the meaning of the drawing.... You lose track beause there’s a lot of them.”

He’s sent his work this year to the international United Nations contest, national contests sponsored by aviation and biotechnology organizations and to local competitions through the PTA and the Islamic Center in Raleigh, and the Cary Islamic Mosque. He has placed in most of those in which winners have been announced.

And Ibrahim has time for more than art. He writes stories, draws comics and illustates them, is an avid reader, and plays football.

He played defense on the Knightdale Super Bowl-winning Mini-Mites and Mighty Mites teams.

And he is able to work in some computer games, Ibrahim said.

But he loves art.

“My favorite subject in school is art. You get to do, every week, all sorts of things, not just painting, but pastels and lots of materials,” he said. “I want to try new ways of making art. Whe I’m older I want to do mosaics like my daddy.”

He wants to be an artist and a doctor when he grows up. Both parents of his mother, Zahra Amjad, are doctors.

Amjad knew his son was gifted in art when he came home with creative drawings when he was in a Head Start program as a four-year-old, he said. He still has those drawings.

Then two years later, one of his works was chosen to be exhibited at the East Regional Library.

To illustrate the contest’s theme, Ibrahim said he thought of ways children can have a healthy future and drew figures of kids playing under rays of the sun which signified a sunrise, or a bright future.

“It makes me feel very proud (to be chosen) because there are a whole lot of people,” he said.

Ibrahim’s also excited about going to the nation’s capital.

“I haven’t been out of the state in a long time,” he said. “It will be fun to go on a plane. I was born in Pakistan and haven’t been on a plane since I was six months old when I came to the United States.”

“I’m looking forward to going to a hotel and being there three days after the inauguration because it will be pretty packed. I might meet with a senator — dad and me.”