Paraparaumu College student enjoyed taking part in Whanganui Walls Art Festival

Rena Nicol.

Paraparaumu College student Rena Nicol was one of eight students who took part in the Whanganui Walls Art Festival.

"It's a festival about appreciating art, presenting art on Whanganui walls, and brightening up the city."

Rena's group took part in the four-day youth programme which involved creating concept drawings, learning new art techniques about scaling artwork from paper to a mural or wall, meeting professional street artists, and creating their own wall art in central Whanganui.

"The first two days were planning on paper and setting out everything we needed to do on a wall behind the Embassy Theatre.

"A group of artists came in and gave us some tips on how to apply our art onto a wall.

"It was a great opportunity to get everything sorted."

They scoped out the wall, measured it up, planned the colour scheme and how they could incorporate their art together.

The finished wall.

Each was allocated an area of the wall to work on.

The theme was fire.

"We had our main bits of art to work on but it was also about how we could blend it together into a cohesive piece."

Rena decided on a "devilish approach which I had to tone down".

"Mine was a person with horns, but they're ram horns, not devil horns."

The third day was prepping the wall and the final day was painting.

Rena was "very proud" of the finished wall.

"It's very nice to see my art and where everyone can see it.

"A lot of hard work went into it."

Rena, 17, from Waikanae, used to be a student at Whanganui Girls' College where she had focused on her art and achieved excellence awards.

This year the family relocated to Kāpiti so Rena has been going to Paraparaumu College.

She hopes to study art at Massey University in Wellington next year.

"I've always been interested in art."