Preston student Sara Watson, who is studying Drawing and Image Making at the University of Central Lancashire, has transformed a battered Skoda Fabia into a canvas which matches the background of a parking space outside her studio in the Hanover Building at the university.

She was given the car out of the breakers' yard at Preston recycling firm Recycling Lives last month, and has been working every day to make sure every inch of the vehicle matched the background.

Now the company which donated the car is looking at using her trickery to advertise its own disappearing act by recycling unwanted cars.

The 22-year-old student said: "I just started thinking about the idea of illusion and did a few sketches in my studio, then I thought I needed something which was a bit more physical to make a bigger impact.

"So I decided to use a space outside my studio and used the car as a bit of a challenge. It took me a few weeks to do it but it has caused quite a stir.

"People have been stopping in the street to look at it and coming up and almost bumping into it, so it has had the desired effect."

Sara, who is from Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester but lives in Broadgate during term time, said she was hoping to move into a career in advertising and would use her final year project to show potential employers.

Steve Jackson, the founder of Recycling Lives which is due to open its homeless shelter including a recycling plant in Kent Street, Deepdale next month, said he hoped the success would encourage more students to work with businesses in Preston.

He said: "Obviously what we want to do is keep talented young people here after they have finished their studies, and hopefully if more businesses like us can work with students that will happen.

"Sara has taken a slightly less brutal approach to making a car disappear, we break them up and recycle them while Sara has used a more novel way of making them vanish.

"When I first saw the photos I was convinced it was something which had been done on the computer, but when you look more closely you see the effort and attention to detail she has put into it. It is just amazing."

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