The Dellow Centre, London, 10 November 2018

Saturday morning at The Dellow Centre in the Aldgate East end of London. I began with a 15-minute standing pose and followed it with a pivoting sequence of 3-minutes, 2-minutes, 1-minute, 50-seconds, 40, 30, 20, 10 and 5-seconds. In practice, however, artists continued to arrive throughout, inevitably disrupting the timekeeping – it meant poses that should have lasted seconds ended up being more like 2 or 3 minutes.

We completed the first half with two 15-minute poses: one kneeling whilst holding two broom handles; the other seated whilst leaning onto a single angled pole. By half-time there was quite a crowd drawing me – I estimated up to 35 people – including a group who were out celebrating a birthday. Everyone was well behaved, but the extra chatter over tea and biscuits meant our second half started a little later than usual.

It was announced that we would finish the session with two poses of 23-minutes each. Somehow that managed to become 30-minutes and 15-minutes, but as I was reclining for the first of these I was quite content to prolong the comfort. Life drawing Aldgate and Shoreditch continues to grow in success, now with Sunday morning meetups in addition to Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. It’s success well deserved.