The Conservatoire, Blackheath, 12 June 2017

It doesn’t take much shifting for a simple, sustainable pose to become challenging or unnecessarily achy. On Monday evening, at The Conservatoire, I was asked for six poses: three of 1-minute, one each of 5-minutes and 10-minutes, and a long pose for the rest of the evening. I managed to make half of them harder than they should have been and I think that’s partly because I have really come to love working here for this group and its tutor, Victoria Rance. They inspire me to try more.

For the first pose, I balanced on one leg, clutching my left foot behind me with my left hand and raising my right arm out in front. It’s a straightforward pose for most models but I have a high centre of gravity and spindly legs, so I was a tad trembly throughout. Standing, kneeling, standing followed – all without complication – but more trickiness came when I slouched diagonally on a high chair, with my left arm dangling back over the top of my head.

Without the extended limb, that 10-minute pose would have been easy. Inexplicably, however, within a few moments it went completely numb and became a dead weight bearing down through my angled neck. After about five minutes of this, the pain was horrible and I had to try shaking the arm back to life. We completed the full time, or maybe stopped a minute short, but I’ve never before experienced such difficulty with any pose this short.

For the long pose, Victoria asked me to curl up on my side in a foetal position whilst artists stood in a semi-circle around me. I opened the pose out a little, otherwise one would see just the top of my head, and another only my derrière. It should have been very comfortable – and mostly was – except I had placed my head on my left biceps, and twisted the other hand under my chin. Two timely stretch breaks kept the aches at bay, however. At the end, it was great to see the diversity of works created.