The Sun, London, 12 August 2019

This was my first time back at The Sun, Clapham since October 2017! Where does the time go? Ideally my next cliché would be ‘the old place hadn’t changed a bit‘ but I was shocked to find its owners had completely white-painted over the classical mural on the upstairs ceiling. So sad to see traditional pubs losing unique characteristics.

If I didn’t know what had been lost, I would have been happy to find the function room feeling cleaner, lighter and more spacious; a good space for life modelling. Happy too to find it lively with artists: 20 in total, including newcomers. It’s a great place to try life drawing; well run, materials provided, no pressure, friendly… plus sweet nibbles!

Pose lengths had changed a bit, but not much, and that was fine by me as I enjoy the format here. I opened with a 1-minute pose then went on to 2-minutes, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20-minutes up to a break. Artists filtered downstairs to recharge their glasses, leaving me to stretch my limbs, check my phone and sneak a couple of chocolatey bites.

After the interval, we completed this session with poses of 30-minutes and 5-minutes. A numb leg acquired during the penultimate seated pose obliged me to remain on my backside till the end. Still, I was able to walk away a satisfied man, glad once more to be modelling for The Moon and Nude. Shame about that ceiling, though…