The Prince of Wales joined more than 450 schoolchildren at an art workshop today - and encountered a sketch of himself.

Eight-year-old Hugo Marsh shyly showed The Prince a red crayon portrait he had drawn.

The Prince chuckled and congratulated him on his efforts, remarking: "Did you do that today?"

Blonde-haired Hugo, from Davenies School in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, did the line drawing in his sketch book standing up as he watched The Prince walk around the exhibition in London.

"I drew it today. I think it looks like him," he said.

The Prince was seeing the results of a nationwide project by his organisation The Prince of Wales Arts & Kids Foundation set up to encourage youngsters to become more involved in the arts.

Over the past few months, hundreds of children from across the UK were asked to draw the place where they live for the gIn The Land of Illustrationsh exhibition.

Children from 28 schools worked alongside professional artists to produce work that was first exhibited in their local town centre.

Pupils from many of the schools then travelled to London to see the exhibition be opened by The Prince of Wales, some of them travelling a very long way.

The children from Walker Road Primary School in Aberdeen flew down for the event having raised the money for the airfares by selling pin badges of "The Old Man of Lochnagar" - the children's book written by The Prince of Wales for his younger brothers when they were children.

As well as viewing the exhibition, which includes a watercolour of The Castle of Mey painted by The Prince, the children also took part in workshops led by Quentin Blake and other professional artists and illustrators.

The Prince of Wales crouched down to talk to the groups of children as they sat on the floor with some of the pictures they created at the workshop.

Lorna Houston, 11, from St Joseph's primary school in Cardiff, south Wales, showed him an unfinished picture of her and her three friends.

"I didn't finish it on purpose. We had had a bit of a squabble but it's all right now," Lorna told The Prince.

In a speech, The Prince praised all the youngsters as "brilliant budding artists".

He added: "It always seems to me so important that the generations are linked in terms of appreciation of all our cultural and artistic heritage."

One of Britain's best loved illustrators Quentin Blake, who is patron of Arts & Kids, led the workshops and also spearheaded the nationwide drawing scheme.

He famously brought Roald Dahl's characters to life through his quirky drawings.

"There are many different ways of drawing the life of your own place and when you start to find out how things came to be there, you may find that it too is a sort of voyage of discovery," Blake said of the exhibition.