Life drawing online, 20 October 2024

A busy week of life modelling (by my recent standards) ended with Sunday afternoon poses at home. Lucy McGeown of London Drawing Group contacted me two days earlier asking whether I would be free for a 1.5hr Zoom life drawing class. Plans for a weekend countryside walk were duly put back a couple of hours, and I accepted.

In my home studio room I fixed my phone camera to a large tripod and set my laptop on a small table adjacent. I would stand on a yoga mat, and kept a comfortable chair nearby for when seated poses were required. During the pre-session set-up meeting we selected my darkest backdrop for best contrast.

The theme was ‘cropping’, which meant that after five 2-minute warm-up poses, each subsequent 15-minute pose would be scrutinised by online artists with an intention of finding an area of the overall composition to ‘crop’ and draw. Lucy demonstrated how this could be facilitated using two L-shaped strips of paper.

Despite having become well practised and experienced at online life modelling, there will always be a detached peculiarity about posing naked and alone with no idea how many people are watching me, or who they are. The webinar format meant our video feed was one-way only, so I didn’t see any artworks. But I’m out there somewhere!

Pose minutes, 2pm-3:30pm

Part 1 : 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 15, 15, 15, 15, 12.