Ravensbourne, London, 28 February 2017

The call-out for this job was posted to the Register of Artists Models (RAM) website on Tuesday 21 February, exactly a week in advance. It took me two days to notice it, so I didn’t hold out much hope when I emailed my speculative pitch. Thus, it came as a pleasant surprise when I received a text message, late Sunday evening, offering me the booking. My RAM subscription for the year had finally paid off.

Ravensbourne is a modern campus on the Greenwich peninsula, directly outside the O2 Arena. Strange I had not previously been here, despite it being so convenient for me to reach. Indeed the only inconvenience was that Esther and I had arranged to go out for a meal on this date, but we are adaptable – the organisers kindly permitted Esther to join us as an artist, and we still shared a fine Mexican meal afterwards.

I was greeted at Ravensbourne by Anita, the art tutor. In my email to her, I’d said “My ‘interesting’ quality is in being, at 6’4″, one of the tallest life models on the circuit. At 10st9, I’m also quite slender and have been described as Schiele-esque“. Thus, she was quite keen on me to reproduce some Egon Schiele poses. These can be tricky but Anita was so engaging and considerate that we found an easy accord.

I started with quick poses: three of 2-minutes, one of 5-minutes, one 10-minutes – a mixture of dynamism, diversity, and attempted elegance. The first half ended with an Egon Schiele pose of 25-minutes, in which most joints were at right-angles. The last 40-minutes was a Schiele adaptation, seated on the floor. I’d thoroughly enjoyed this session, all the more so for Esther being there. Hopefully we will return some day.