A former student from St Clement Danes School will have her artwork displayed at a London gallery after being chosen for a prestigious art scholarship.

Sian Tillott, 19 and from Rickmansworth, was one of 24 young artists to receive a scholarship from the Royal Society of British Artists in July.

After being selected for the scholarship, her work will be exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London, between Wednesday, March 11 and Saturday March 21.

The psychology student, who specialises in pencil and biro based portraits, will be displaying "Mum", which is a portrait of her mother, Carol Payne.

The 19-year-old said: "I could not even begin to say how long that portrait took. It took hours and hours.

"I started with the eyes because that is where most of the emotion is and then worked around that, which takes forever.

"I hope people will like it. There will also be proper artists [at the exhibition], who have been doing art for a long time and it will be great to see their work. I hope people will like it and appreciate the time and effort that went into the piece".

Ms Tillott said she started drawing after looking through her mum’s, grandad’s and great-grandfather’s work and aspired to be as good as them.

She said: "When I was younger, I used to look through all my family’s art-work and I wanted to draw like them because I thought they were amazing."

The University of Exeter student said she had received praise from illusionist Derren Brown after completing a life-like biro drawing of the pyschic.

Sian added: "I replied to a painting of his on twitter and put a picture of my work in and he tweeted back to say he was very happy with it.

The National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) teams up with the RBA to find "outstanding" work by final year A-level students and display it at the Mall Galleries in London.

Carol Payne, Sian’s mum said: "We are quite an art orientated family. We have all got some sort of art skill in us but she started drawing people, aged twelve and the first drawing she did was her grandad for his birthday one year. We all looked at and it was just amazing.

"She does not realise how good she is.

Artists who have been awarded a scholarship become a lifetime member of the Royal Society of British Artists and have the opportunity to exhibit their work at the show each March.