The Bolton, London, 17 June 2019

I wasn’t long into my opening 15-minute pose upstairs at The Bolton, naked with my back towards the door, when I overheard Adrian Dutton saying to persons unknown: “Are you here for the drawing? Did you want the toilets? Just having a look around? I bet you didn’t expect to see that…”

That’s the thing with drop-in sessions: literally anyone can drop-in. But it was another warm and thus quiet evening, so they would have been welcome to stay. A set of five 1-minute poses followed, then 5, 10, 15-minutes to an interval. It surprised me when I felt a slight ache during the 10-minutes as I’d been doing well to avoid pain recently.

After a long break for craft beers and chat, we resumed with another 10-minute pose that was entirely different yet still ached like its predecessor. Taking more care, I then managed to see out the night with comfortable poses of 15 and 30-minutes. All’s well that ends well, especially when there’s some great art to show for it.