Royal Inn on the Park, London, 13 December 2018

With only a dozen days to go till Christmas, my year in life modelling came to an end at the Royal Inn on the Park. I treated myself to a large red wine, then prepared the space by placing my white sheet over the way too ambitious pose illustrations on the venue’s yoga mat, before aligning with a solitary yet entirely adequate fan heater…

And so to work. I struck a suitably dramatic 10-minute upright pose to get us started, then moved to a sequence of three 2-minute poses before lengthening out with poses of 5-minutes, 10-minutes, and 15-minutes. Exactly 12 and a half minutes remained of the first half, so I saw them out as I’d begun: on my two feet.

Artwork by Peter Dobbin.

Artwork by Peter Dobbin.

Artwork by Ed J Bucknall.

Artwork by Ed J Bucknall.

After an interval, I resumed with what would be my last two poses this side of the first weekend in January. I began by sitting on a chair for 30-minutes with one knee raised and one arm resting upon it. Then for a final 30-minutes I stood with hands behind my neck and elbows winging out above my head.

Artwork by Peter Dobbin.

Artwork by Ed J Bucknall.

Artwork by Peter Dobbin.

For no-one’s satisfaction except my own, I’d intended to end 2018 with a tough pose, and this was it. Regrettably I had to shake out my ever-tightening left arm a couple of times towards the end, but it seemed not to disturb the artists. One even kindly gifted me their drawing – Christmas had come early here in north east London.