The Dellow Centre, London, 8 December 2019

Upon arriving a quarter of an hour early at The Dellow Centre, the first words I heard were from one of the regular artists declaring surprise to see a model on time at all! It seemed Life drawing Aldgate and Shoreditch had suffered a series of latecomers. Punctuality and reliability remain important qualities for a life model. So to work…

After the opening pose of 15-minutes, I was asked to provide five poses of 2-minutes. This wrong-footed me a bit as I’d assumed I would be asked for a ten-pose sequence from 3-minutes to 3-seconds, as per recent sessions here. I quickly improvised a new plan: rising, rotating, rolling my arms and descending.

We started at 11:30am sharp yet, after one pose of 15-minutes and ten of 2-minutes, somehow it was now 12:10pm. This appeared to confirm my inkling that timekeeping had thus far not been exemplary. Poses got longer from this point, however, and duly became strict. Two of 20-minutes took us to a break.

I sat upon the floor for the first 20-minutes, then stood with a broom handle held over my right shoulder and vertically behind my back. Poses during the first half had each been in the round, but after our break for tea and biscuits the room was reconfigured so I could finished with a single 40-minute seated pose, my back to the windows.

I’d intially selected a posture in which my body was titled and supported by a forearm that rested upon one leg, but it was suggested I straighten up to make the pose more comfortable. I did so, but probably should have stuck with my first instinct as my back muscles now bore the burden. It was bearable, though; a nice afternoon.