Hacknakey, London, 2 February 2026

Occupying a post-industrial Bohemian live-in studio space in Clapton, ‘Hacknakey‘ is one of the most unconventional takes on a standard 2-hour life drawing session that I have experienced in many a moon. If you like to hone your artistic practice in sombre focused settings, this is not the place for you; but if you’re happy to chill, have fun, be social, and draw a naked model while a naked musician plays live… roll up!

My pose space was a coffee table. Around me were low-slung cosy chairs and sofas, interspersed with pot plants and inspirational arty ephemera bathed softly in colourful mood light. Organiser Emily invited artists to grab some drawing materials and settle down into a seat. During the first half it was just me posing while Emily set a range of artistic challenges, many of which I hadn’t encountered before

Organisers often tell artists to stay loose and not be precious about quality during the opening quick poses. Emily took this one step further by asking them to scrunch their paper and flatten it again before the initial sequence of four 30-second poses started, thereby removing all possibility of anybody taking the outcome too seriously. And this was just one of many original interventions.

Central to Emily’s approach during the rest of our first half was collaborative drawing. That is, getting people in groups of two or three to work on a one sheet together. The task could involve individuals making marks simultaneously on the paper, or them all holding the marking pen at the same time. The first half ended with a 10-minute pose in which drawings were passed clockwise for continuation at one-minute intervals.

As you’d imagine, the quality of artworks produced was a secondary consideration to enjoyment of the process. Nonetheless, I saw some nice results. Cometh the second half, cometh the music man. I sat for the final pose to avoid obscuring the view to our naked singer-guitarist. Mercifully, there was no requirement for me to join in singing… and so it was that to the very end, a good time was had by all!

Pose minutes, 7:30pm-9:30pm

Part 1 : 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2, 3, 2, 3+3, 5, 3, 5, 10.
— break —
Part 2 : 10, 20.

Artworks

With apologies to artists I’m unable to credit.