Royal Inn on the Park, London, 5 December 2019

This was my first life model booking since returning from a summer fortnight in South Africa. Here winter was beginning to assert itself and Christmas was fewer than three weeks away. I walked briskly through the busy murk of east London, to the Royal Inn on the Park, wondering whether many artists would do likewise; the answer was yes! Using the venue’s Christmas flowers, I made my pose space a bit festive for them…

In fact I think almost 30 people joined us to draw – a good turn-out, and very pleasing as I like to see Adrian Dutton’s London Life Drawing groups doing well. We began the evening with a 10-minute standing pose then swept through three 3-minute poses before closing the first half with poses of 5, 15 and 20-minutes. One small heater plus the warmth emanating from an intense oval of sketchers kept me cosy throughout.

Some of my poses were new, others were recent favourites, but as always I checked my blog to make sure I hadn’t used any of them when I was last here in August. For the second half I provided two poses of 30-minutes each. The first saw me seated on the floor with crossed legs and one forearm weaving between them. The second was less fussy, more natural; a simple standing pose with one hand on its shoulder.

At 9:30pm we were done. Applause was kindly forthcoming and works were set upon the floor for general admiration. Several eye-catching drawings managed to elude my camera, which was frustrating, but there was good quality, fun and commitment in the creations all around the room. Returning to my bulky clothes, I bade my farewells and departed into the December night air, reacclimatised to joyful London life modelling.