Hutton Community Centre, Brentwood, 29 July 2019

I came away from my first time posing for the Life Drawing Class in Hutton feeling upbeat and hopeful of another booking. Even at my most optimistic, however, I didn’t expect it to come just five weeks later. Nevertheless, in that short space of time I was back with The Drawing Hut at Hutton Community Centre, robed and raring to go.

My rapid return was in part made possible by the fact that only one other artist joined organiser Stephanie Mills for my debut – a freakishly low turn-up. Happily there was more of a congregation to sketch my shapes this evening. We occupied our first hour with two poses of 5-minutes, two of 10-minutes and two of 15-minutes.

Insanely, I somehow overexerted a leg muscle during the second 5-minute pose and couldn’t prevent it fibrillating constantly up to the interval. No pain, just disconcerting. For the final 40-minutes I propped myself on the edge of a table – a simple pose that resulted in some wonderful artworks. Increasingly I realise simplicity is the way to go!