In the heart of Shoreditch, surrounded by sparse, expensive boutiques and impressively grubby bars, is a small art school founded by the Prince of Wales to raise the profile of observational drawing — not what you might expect to see among the many trendy, commercial galleries that dot the area. And yet the Prince’s Drawing School is, ten years on, buzzing — so much so that it has opened a new West London branch, in Kensington — Kensington Palace that is. Sitting around a mirrored table in one of its grand “grace and favour” apartments-turned-studios, I take up the subject with five of the school’s graduates.

“Well, a lot of very successful artists work figuratively,” says Daniel Preece, an established artist who graduated from the Slade in 1993. “Think of someone like Cecily Brown. Look at Lucian Freud,” he says, and nods across the table to 26-year-old Perienne Christian.

Thanks to the drawing school’s connections, Christian is the muse for one of the UK’s most revered living artists. “I sit for Lucian a few nights a week,” Christian says. “Catherine Goodman, the school’s artistic director, introduced us and he was looking for someone, so I’ve been doing it for over a year now. It’s been a fantastic experience,” says Christian, who herself produces surreal, imagined landscapes.

Christian and Preece are among five artists who have benefited from the school’s continuing support for its graduates — they are soon to launch an exhibition at the Thomas Williams Fine Art after a year’s residency in one of the Kensington Palace studios. “We were given a studio and had access to the gardens, and we could pretty much do what we liked,” says Amelia Power, who chose to depict the Kensington exteriors with steely realism. “We didn’t have access to anywhere else though, the security is really tight.”

Sitting in on a life-drawing class, the intense focus quickly becomes clear. “I want to see Louise scream out from the paper!” my teacher, Thomas Newbolt, commands, as I try to correct my figure’s squat proportions. “NQR,” he writes on my paper. “Relax and concentrate on getting everything Not Quite Right. I don’t want to see a copy of what’s in front of you, I want to see you inspired by it.”

The Prince of Wales is not the brains behind this outfit. Goodman, a practising artist who previously worked at the Prince’s Institute of Architecture (now the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment), came to the Prince of Wales Trust with the idea in 2000. “It was a time when the Royal Academy and the Slade were both closing their life rooms, and there didn’t seem to be a serious place where young artists could access models,” she says. “We take painters, sculptors, video artists, people who work in animation, film ... Drawing is really about learning to see, so we take the students’ interests and we encourage that in whatever way we can through drawing.”

The Prince, known for his support of skill-based teaching, was happy to add the drawing school to his list of charities. Goodman set up on the top floor of a disused fur warehouse, where artists such as Gavin Turk were squatting, so desirable is its vast space and creamy natural light.

As well as running public courses, free life-drawing sessions for all London art students and a Saturday school for teenagers, they now take on about 30 bursary-funded students on a postgraduate drawing year, offering two days of drawing tuition a week, seminars, drawing trips and a free studio. “We could fill this place ten times over,” Goodman tells me. “But we want to keep it small enough that we know each student, and although we look like a rich institution, it takes a lot of fundraising to keep going.”

The likes of David Hockney, Dinos Chapman, Grayson Perry and Marc Quinn have given talks. “Hockney showed us how to set up a camera obscura — he was amazing,” says Jenny Blake, who spent her Kensington Palace residency painting everything from swans to Fabergé eggs.

Goodman doesn’t bandy these names about. She isn’t worried about other misguided perceptions, but the graduates are irritated. “I went to a gallery the other day and said I was from the drawing school, and they said, ‘Oh, is that where they do life drawing?’ I gritted my teeth rather than decide to have a row,” Preece says.

“Actually, I think because the school has an unfashionable idea to it, we’re even more liberated,” says Pippa Ridley, who is exhibiting colourful café scenes at Thomas Williams. “At the Slade I always felt under pressure to do big, fashionable painting, whereas with the drawing school I felt that I could do whatever I liked. But people hear ‘Prince Charles’ and they think it’s just life drawing and that’s just rubbish.”

The Prince has visited several times to inspect the school — as did his mother on one nerve-racking occasion. “She came into the studios to watch the artists work, and she was really great, very encouraging,” Goodman says. “Some of the students were so nervous they couldn’t stand up.”

Five Artists from the Kensington Palace Studio of the Prince’s Drawing School is at Thomas Williams Fine Art until Nov 20 (princesdrawingschool.org, thomaswilliamsfineart.com)

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