Displaying featured image on frontpage

Hey there,
I need to be able to display a certain image and excerpt from the most recent post within a category on my front page.

Specifically, my front page needs to display my most recent work from my ‘work’ category, but just display the image itself and the excerpt.

I have a vague idea on how to do this, by using the get_post_meta, but i’m not sure how to only target, only the 1st post in only the work category and get only the image and excerpt.

I am putting the image link as a custom field as I assume I should?

Thank you very much for any assistance.

EDIT: I also realised it would make sense if I had a custom field that said weather or not the post should be featured. If theres a way to check if a post has a feature value of yes or no and posting it/moving on to the next one accordingly, that would be great.

Thanks again.