Eastbourne House, London, 9 October 2014

My October return to Bethnal Green was for Adrian Dutton‘s Thursday class. It was to be a duo session with Boyko – an experienced life model, nonetheless undergoing the ritual of ‘auditioning’ to become a member of the Register of Artists’ Models (I’m RAM2437 myself.)

It had been the first cold, wet week of autumn, but Eastbourne House was sufficiently heated to keep us comfortable throughout the evening.

The deterioration in weather was not matched by a deterioration in artist numbers. The turnout was good, and they would do us proud.

The two halves of the session roughly mirrored each other. We began with an informal 10 or 15 minute pose, during which artists drifted into readiness and drew as much or as little as they preferred. We then progressed to a quickfire dynamic sequence, and progressed towards longer 20 or 30 minute poses.

I usually try to do a bit of interacting with the other model in duo pieces, but with this billed as an audition I thought it best to let Boyko do his thing without distraction. He did it very well, clearly no stranger to the format.

As ever at Adrian’s classes, when the evening was done he encouraged the artists to lay out their drawings for all to admire. I remarked that I thought this was the best set of works as a whole I’d seen for several months. Well worth coming out for on a rainy night in Bethnal Green. Always a pleasure.