Basia Hamilton is a respected artist who has painted portraits of royalty including the Queen Mother, Princess Anne, The Duchess of York and Pope John Paul the Second. Here she offers her help and tips to bring out everybody’s inner artist.

To celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee, wouldn’t it be great if all the young people of the UK put away their computers and video games and painted a portrait of their Queen. People often forget the important role portraiture has played in history as for centuries it was the only way to show people what others looked like, how they dressed and what manners and lifestyles they had.

Even just for people in general, excluding royal, portraiture was a mirror of society of every kind from the times of when the first paintings of hunting were discovered. Nowadays we have camera, which replace the human eye and produce a more modern and efficient equivalent of portraits. The art of portraiture certainly took a different direction, towards technology but photographs will never replace artwork in my opinion.

It would certainly be impossible for everyone to paint a portrait of the Queen from life but my Renaissance of the Portrait Foundation, together with the Good School Guide, organised a competition for all students in England to paint a portrait of the Queen. Who knows, maybe by painting the Queen we can all play a separate role in history. Now is the perfect opportunity for children.