SHE'S the young artistic ace who helped win her class some time on the ice.

Highfield Primary School's Olivia Larkin won a competition to design a winter picture for city ice rink operators, SKATE Southampton.

And as a prize, Olivia and all her Year 5 classmates got to lace up their skates and enjoy a free session on the ice.

Olivia won the top prize with her design, which beat hundreds of entries from schools across the area.

Students were asked to create pictures of what they though the ice rink's pretend penguins do in their spare time.

And Olivia's drawing, showing penguins playing in mythical 'Candyland', was the one that caught the eye of staff from SKATE.

Laurie Scott, Ice Rink Manager, said: "We are delighted that Ice SKATE Southampton’s school competition found a very worthy winner.

"Olivia’s drawing is fantastic winning her tickets for her whole class from Highfield Primary School.

"We ran this competition to give children from local schools the chance to come skating as our guests on our real ice rink.

"We had hundreds of entries from schools throughout the area so choosing a winner was very difficult."

Olivia's dad, Ben Larkin, an entrepreneur from Bassett, said: "We are enormously proud of our daughter.

"It was the school who gave them the chance to take part.

"We didn't even know she was doing it until she'd finished drawing and showed us.

"She's a very active, energetic fun-filled girl and we are absolutely delighted she won the competition."

As well as giving Olivia's class a free session on the ice, SKATE also gave four family tickets to the runners-up of the competition.

Winners and runners-up all came from Highfields Primary School and Moorlands School.

The ice rink will remain at Westquay until Tuesday, January 2.

It will be open every day, expect Christmas day, with the normal opening times of 10.30am to 11pm.