Telegraph Hill Centre, London, 7 July 2016

I have often said that when modelling nude for life drawing groups it doesn’t matter to me whether there’s one or one-hundred artists present. Thus far that lower end of the scale hasn’t been put to the test but for a while at this session it looked a possibility. Come the 7:30pm start time, only me and organiser-artist-friend Frances had pitched up at the Telegraph Hill Centre. Truly summer is a quiet time in the life art world.

Frances asked if it would be OK if we went ahead anyway and she could simply draw me herself. We’ve known each other long enough for this to be no problem, but before we had chance to make it a private sitting we were joined by another artist; and along came a third when we were already well into the second pose – we’d become a group. For variety, Frances asked if I would mind opening it with a 5-minute kneeling pose.

Nude as I was, it seemed most poses were used as practice for portrait drawing. We continued: 5-minutes, 10, 15, and 15-minutes up to a tea break, then a single seated 40-minute pose to the end. There has always been a pleasant, laid-back, mellow vibe about Life Drawing@Telegraph Hill. I’ll be hoping to see it returned to full numbers once the midsummer lull has passed.