Hutton Community Centre, Brentwood, 24 June 2019

Hutton Community Centre was my destination for a Life Drawing Class in Hutton with The Drawing Hut. It would be my debut modelling in this neck of the woods, not too far from home as the crow flies, but a bit more circuitous by public transport. After a long walk down from Shenfield station, I arrived plenty early for a 7:30pm start.

The curse of the warm evenings struck again. By the time we were due to begin there was still only me and the group’s organiser – Stephanie – in attendance. Unperturbed, we got underway with a 5-minute pose. Another artist, Tony joined us and together we agreed to abandon plans for a lot of short poses, and instead have a single long pose.

I didn’t choose the most comfortable standing pose imaginable but Stephanie timed it in four 20-minute chunks with a 5-minute rest break after each, and a 10-minute finale. By the third chunk my back was feeling the strain, but time flew by as aspiring young cheerleaders in an adjacent room relentlessly counted their beats from 1 to 8.

Although we had just a brace of artists and despite me not picking a comfy pose, this was actually a very pleasant serene session. It was interesting to chat with Stephanie and Tony, who are both experienced as artists and familiar with the life drawing scene, and it felt good being able to give them this unexpected bespoke long-pose evening.