Bridge House, London, 22 February 2016

Life model bookings continue luring me to ever-more exotic corners of London. On this occasion it was Penge, deep in the capital’s south-eastern hinterlands, accessible via the London Overground branch – or should that be ‘root’? – to West Croydon. Not that I managed to explore any of Penge; I was to model at Bridge House, less a minute’s walk from Penge West station.

The territory may have been new but the group organiser was reassuringly familiar. I’d posed many times for Tatiana Moressoni at The Cambria and The Pigeonhole, both in Camberwell, but this was my first time at her new venue for Anerley and Penge Life Drawing. I was to pose within a lower-floor area of this multi-tiered, many-room’d pub, in the company of 10 artists.

As soon as Tatiana had partitioned us from the rest of civilisation by taping large white sheets across the entrance to our room, we were set to begin. The whole session was to be a sequence of short dynamic poses, which suited me down to the ground: three 2-minute poses, four 5-minute poses, three 10-minute poses up to a break, and finally three 15-minute poses to a finish.

It was another session where instead of applause at the end, I had the joy of individual artists approaching me to offer kind words of thanks. One said he wished only that the poses could have been longer. Well, alas, it is the nature of dynamic work that poses are more interesting, but equally more difficult to extend. Nonetheless, I would happily settle down longer for this group, plus Tatiana who created the fine works below.