Chester Students Prize 2025

The painting features two of my original characters. What you see is a memory, the girl looks at the boy but he avoids her gaze. She is out of his life, but he still relives that moment. He didn’t know how much he would value her presence until she was gone.

Taking inspiration from a range of artists to create a blue self portrait.

Acrylic portrait of Derek the donkey, celebrating gentle character, warmth, and affection. Inspired by a love for donkeys and their calm nature.

‘Elizabeth’ is an acrylic study on canvas of a woman with flowers in her hair. She is fictional.

To create this image, I wanted to capture the movement of light in an area of high contrast creating a defined light painting. I created this image setting my camera on a slow shutter speed spherically moving my arm to create an orbit of light. To add, I centered myself in the orbit to showcase a dark looming figure in the centre of the orbit. To create the dark figure-like effect I set my camera’s ISO to 100 to reduce the amount of light let into my shutter over the period the shutter was open. In this image I wanted to showcase the endless opportunities in movement photography and that you create visual art over a period time during a photograph with no editing involved.

I decided to create a drawing that depicts a human face pieced together with a tiger’s face, in an incomplete jigsaw puzzle to represent mixed identities. The missing pieces represent the feeling of being imperfect and I drew this on a background that appears like a wooden table to help make the ‘out of place’ pieces stand out. I used oil based coloured pencils, blending different shades and tones together to create the appearance of different skin and fur textures. I used white pencil to blend it all together, to give it a smooth realistic appearance with lots of depth. For the eyes, I used deep greens and blues to contrast with the dark orange hues in the fur and the red lips.

To create my work I wanted to capture the community feeling of Chester by using recognisable landmarks found in Chester like the Coachworks Arcade, Chester markets and Picture house. In my edit I used the bright colours found around Chester with its blooming flowers and stained glass windows found in Chester cathedral to make the edit stand out. I used lots of images with signs of landmarks in Chester to give the viewer an experience of seeing everything Chester has to offer, not just confined to one small area.

For my piece of artwork, I wanted to make something very creative and surreal and I came up with the idea of butterflies trapped in bubbles. For the bubbles I used bright and bold coloured pencils to create smooth gradients and realistic detail that really stands out against the dark background. For the wings I took inspiration from many different real butterflies and combined them to create something original.

I decided to create a miniature town that combines architectural elements from both Chester and the Philippines. I chose this approach to highlight the contrast between the two cultures, particularly in terms of architectural style, materials, and structural design. Having lived in the Philippines during my early childhood before moving to the UK, this piece reflects my personal experience of living between two distinct environments and cultural contexts. The work explores how these differing influences can coexist within a single imagined space, representing my connection to both places.

I crafted this portrait with acrylic paint and biro on A1 card, exploring the beauty of close-up natural forms through the joyful expression of a dog.

A Photoshop refinement of an original photo I had taken of a flower, inspired by Yoichiro Nishimura. Flowers are often linked with beauty, love and nature. The contrast of the white and blue petals stand out beautifully against the dark backdrop, creating a striking visual impact.

My piece is about finding light in the dark places and how at the end of a dark period there’s always the small things we enjoy.

A natural study into close up organic forms, focusing on fungi and florals using biro pen and coloured pencil on cartridge paper.

This painting captures a quiet moment of a garden view.

I wanted to create a surreal piece by infusing two ordinary ideas of coffee and fish together to create an unnatural and out of place image. By using acrylic paint for the metallic coffee press and for the glass of coffee, I was able to emphasise the contrast between the ordinary aspects and the surreal addition of the fish which I drew using colour pencil. Whilst one fish swims in circles around the plunger of the coffee press, another dives into the glass cup and becomes submerged in the black coffee.

An original photograph of a Lilac Bloom inspired by Anne Belmount’s detailed botanical images. The densely layered, softly ruffled petals spiral inward toward a darker center. The colour palette is dominated by gentle purples and lavender tones, enhanced to appear richer.

Lola (in Filipino) means grandma. My grandma and her beauty have always inspired me. I have been missing her ever since I moved to the UK. This is my first time painting a portrait using acrylic paint and I chose to capture my grandma’s beauty whilst also depicting the farm she works in as the background. This portrait in many ways represents my Filipino culture and symbolises how hard-working Filipino’s are.

For my piece I wanted to show mushrooms and the effect they have on the environment. I used cross hatching and some pencil to add more depth and more small detail and for realism. I drew a frog and a snail to show to animals and how they interact with certain plants. I used a light background and dark pen to contrast to background. I have been researching mushrooms in lessons, so it gave me time to see which ones stood out to me such as the frog.

Petals are the shedding of the past, and the butterfly is the promise of change and a new beginning.

Textural painting inspired by the work of Patricia Lintner and Anselm Keifer and in response to my own photography exploring rust and decay.

This pencil and coloured pencil self-portrait is inspired by my GCSE theme Identity. I explored the idea of fragility and the feeling of being on the edge of turning 16. This is an important moment in my life as I begin to change from a girl into a young woman. These thoughts can feel fearful, daunting and sometimes suffocating because the future is unknown. However, the future can also hold a lot of beauty and possibility.

For my drawing, I wanted to create a piece that depicts a decaying skeleton with a human iris on the right eye with colorful growths, such as: fruits, eyes and flowers growing from the skeleton. I did this to show the separation between life and death. For example the colour of the different objects growing from the skeleton may represent the beauty of life. Contrastingly, the dullness and greyness of the skeleton may be interpreted as the monotony of life. But, the use of the iris being within the skeleton represents how there can also be beauty in death. However, what I really enjoy about this piece is it may be interpreted in many different ways.

My Art piece represents the concept of time and life. The flowers represent a person through the various stages of life. At the start of life, we don’t know what to expect and look forward to the future. What we don’t realise is how quickly time goes by. One minute we are looking to the future and the next we are looking back on our past, wishing perhaps we did all the things we dreamt of doing. This painting suggest that we should hold onto the people we love and cherish every moment we have on earth; and not let it slip through our fingers.

A hyper-realistic graphite snow leopard. I have always been passionate about drawing wild big cats and enjoy the snow leopards at Chester Zoo. They embody courage, resilience and quiet power. Through detailed fur textures and intense, focused eyes, I aimed to capture its calm strength and silent dominance. The direct gaze creates a strong connection, inspiring appreciation and respect for the leopard’s enduring spirit.

This piece is a representation of how our oceans are drowning in waste. With a stark contrast of colour splitting the composition in two halves, this symbolises life, lifelessness and the gradual destruction of our oceans.

In my piece, I wanted to capture how many emotions are hidden behind a blank face. I utilised different colours and media to capture a range of emotions and textures to demonstrate the width of the human emotional spectrum. I also tried to use a contrast between warm and cool tones to show the difference between emotions. Each box in my piece captures a different fragment of the human mind to show there is often more going on than meets the eye.

For this image I wanted to create a piece of artwork which evoked emotion and explored expression diving into the deeper meaning of surrealism. I used a variation of coloured pencils and developed my techniques using colour theory to express the texture of the gums and successfully embedding the eye lids onto the teeth. While utilizing a blending stick to ensure I was able to achieve a level of depth and realism showing a variety of contrasting objectives.

This piece was an opportunity for me to expand my artistic skills with acrylic paint. Through this painting, I wanted to explore my love for nature but also challenge myself by experimenting with acrylic.

For the macaw I wanted to create the effect that it was watching from above and looking from the side. I used the colour pencil black to increase the depth and lightness of the macaw and I used sharp pencils to make this picture look more realistic with different fur textures and skin. I used white pencil to increase the smoothness. I wanted to make this very creative by using bright and bold colours in the feathers of the macaw.

This water colour painting shows my two favourite places merged in a vivid memory. With highlighting the vines and the stippled moss showing the ageing of the frame and arch way and with each flowers hints a new beauty being born creating a new scenery.