Bridge House, London, 22 January 2018

Anerley and Penge Life Drawing is temporarily under new management. While its founder, Tatiana takes an extended sabbatical to savour the wonders of India, we are blessed to have Sara Kuan as boss. Sara is a regular at Tatiana’s Camberwell Life Drawing group, a staggeringly gifted illustrator, and – as I found this evening – a very reliable timekeeper. I arrived nice and early at Bridge House for a 7pm start.

My previous sessions here have either been ‘short poses’, which means nothing more than 15-minutes, or ‘long poses’, meaning the reverse. This evening was technically a long pose session but we started with three of 2-minutes, just to get warmed up. Next came two of 15-minutes (both standing), followed by one of 23-minutes (seated on the floor), which took us to an interval.

After the break I sat upon a foot stool, in different attitudes and directions, for two final poses of 20 and 25-minutes. In a fleeting instant, we inadvertently brought life drawing to the masses when a sheet that was taped across a doorway between our art space and the adjacent pub room suddenly fell to the floor. I heard gasps, but Sara leapt into action and swiftly reattached it. Hopefully no lasting psychological damage was done.

When the session had concluded, everybody observed the custom of putting favourite sketches on the floor for broad appreciation. In all honesty I can say that this was the strongest set of works I’d seen in two years of modelling here. I had sensed everyone was getting absorbed by the challenges, and appreciated their respectful applause at the end. Tatiana can be very happy in the knowledge her group is flourishing nicely.