Cass Art, London, 4 February 2014

A rare opportunity arrived in early February when I was invited to be the solo model for a portraiture class at Cass Art, Islington. The class would be led by Nick Lord, who’d been named Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year in December 2013.

A strike by London Underground staff had cast some doubt over attendance numbers, but very few artists dropped out on the night. Among the 30+ that turned up were Nikki and Aaron, whom I’d previously worked with at Art Macabre events. It was Nikki who put forward my name for this one.

We’d set out three arcs of chairs for those who would be drawing. A projection screen to my right carried a rolling presentation of Nick’s works – it was abundantly clear why he’d impressed the Sky Arts judges so much. Cass Art supplied materials and a very welcome Joy Division soundtrack for the evening.

All poses were fully clothed. We kicked off with a series of short standing poses, then lengthened them and moved to long seated poses in the second half. Nick suggested a couple of angles and offered a few insights to the artists. The evening remained very laid-back throughout.

Here are some of Nikki’s great drawings and photos from the evening:

And here’s Aaron’s superb caricature of me from the evening’s final pose:

Drawing by @silveraj – © Aaron Jacob Jones

Very nice work. Check out the Cass Art blog interview with Nick Lord.