YOUNG artist Eleanor Johnstone has won the regional finals of a national competition with her Weymouth and Portland-inspired design of the internet search engine Google.

The Year 11 Budmouth student scooped first place in the 14-16 age group of the Doodle4Google competition's South West finals after she was voted the judges' favourite out of thousands of entries.

Now she needs people to vote for her logo online to win the national competition.

Eleanor, 15, of Nottington, Weymouth, said the success was all the more special because her grandmother Nadine Davies, who passed away this year, inspired her artwork.

She said: "It was amazing to hear I'd won. It means a lot to me because my grandma, who's just died, was an amazing artist. She died in March and it's the first good thing that's happened to us since then."

The theme of this year's competition was my community' and Eleanor's winning design recreates the word Google' with an anchor, beach huts and Olympic flag on a buoy as the first three letters. The second g' represents love and the community, the l' is a fishing boat and the final letter is made of fireworks.

Eleanor's entry is now up against nine other regional winners across the United Kingdom.

The winning entry will be used on the Google homepage in the UK on October 1.

School spokesman Marcel Ciantar said: "It's a huge achievement. All the schools in the South West submitted designs and she won. The really exciting bit is Eleanor's design is now head to head with nine other UK regional winners, her design is on the Google website and faces the public vote.

"The design with the most votes wins the national competition and goes to London to meet the Queen at Google HQ.

"If she gets the most votes from four age groups she goes to California."

Mr Ciantar is now hoping the whole of the South West will back Eleanor before Monday's voting deadline.