National Maritime Museum, London, 21 October 2019

My return to the National Maritime Museum to model for its employees’ after-hours life drawing was not a direct repeat booking but rather the result of me responding to their model call-out posted on the Register of Artists’ Models (RAM) website. Their fee would cover 78% of this year’s RAM subscription, and thus goes 78% of the way towards vindicating renewal. I’m now 45th in the list of long-standing RAM members.

In the session itself, there was no need for long-standing as all poses were less than half an hour in length. We began with four 1-minute poses, two 5-minute poses, then 10-minutes, 15-minutes, and another 10-minute pose up to a break. We finished with poses of 20-minutes and 25-minutes. I’d felt comfortable throughout, albeit I was told at the end: “The longer the poses got, the more difficult you seemed to make them!”

RAM membership is a curious thing. I first signed-up back in March 2012, yet of 473 people currently registered as models, 216 joined in the past year alone. As the total membership seems to oscillate around 500, it shows the drop-out rate must be quite high. RAM doesn’t meet every model’s needs, but I find it’s still just about worthwhile financially, and they do play a useful role in setting standards. I’ll stick with them.