The Conservatoire, Blackheath, 26 March 2018

Just like last term at The Conservatoire, I found myself booked for the final Monday evening life drawing class before it broke for the holidays. The day was a pleasant one and I arrived sufficiently early to find exuberant students and parents from a preceding mixed media course still nattering in the main art room. Time was on our side, though. Come 7:30pm, I began with five poses in the round: 1-minute, 1, 1, 5 and 10-minutes.

The shorter poses are a chance to have some fun making semi-random shapes before we start the main work of the session. A slight misjudgement of my positioning for the 10-minute pose – with toes, tendons and arms fully stretched – made that one slightly less fun, but never mind. For the long pose I helped tutor Victoria Rance shift our set against one wall and arrange cushions so I could sit with arms out for about 2-hours.

We started around eight o’clock and continued till ten with two stretch breaks at forty minute intervals. Someone stated early on that I looked like a Roman emperor but by the end it was agreed I seemed more akin to Bill Nighy in Love Actually. For me the most important thing was to endure in comfort; my greatest challenge was to resume with exactness after each break – I think it went pretty well. Bring on the next term!