Head down, umbrella angled, hunched forward, trudging the dark rain-swept streets of Clapham… I would much rather be in the sun. But then The Sun was my destination. Monday was my first modelling session at the pub since September last year.
It had been a long time since I’d posed at The Sun but even longer since I last worked with Julia, the group’s co-organiser. During recent bookings I’ve enjoyed the company of Aless, her partner in The Moon & Nude, so it was lovely to catch up again.
I arrived early and found Julia preparing the first-floor rooms. She was keen that I take it easy whilst we chatted. After 30 seconds watching her drag heavy tables, however, my conscience could stand it no longer. More hands made lighter work.
A dozen artists braved the elements to join us. As we began, I found the pose timings reassuringly familiar. In the first hour and ten minutes we worked through nine poses:
- 5 minutes standing, hands linked with one elbow behind my head
- 4 minutes standing, bent forward with one arm bowing out
- 3 minutes standing, one hand on face, one arm outstretched
- 2 minutes standing, crouched with one arm reaching up
- 1 minute kneeling, both arms reaching up to the ceiling
- 5 minutes seated on the floor, one leg stretched, hand on foot
- 10 minutes standing, both hands behind head
- 15 minutes reclining, one foot up on a stool
- 20 minutes seated on a stool, right arm cradling right knee
We took a break and then completed the session with a single 40-minute pose. Once more I was seated on the stool, this time with left ankle crossing my right leg, leaning forward with left arm resting on left knee. It was more comfortable than it sounds.
A little bonus after the event was finding that one of the artists, Harley, had tweeted a link to his blog with many outstanding drawings from the evening. Two of his drawings are reproduced below, with grateful thanks – it’s nice to find another life art blogger.
Before leaving The Sun I once more offered to help with the tables and chairs, but this time Julia was insistent that the responsibility was hers. I hope it won’t be too long till I can be of some use to this group again.
We’re nearing the sharp end of the academic year for college art. There are studies to be pursued but also substantial portfolios of work to be prepared for submission. With students torn between the two and – who knows? – perhaps also the distractions and allures of Valentine’s Day, this wasn’t the most heavily attended class ever.
Of course it makes no difference to me whether I’m modelling for one or one hundred artists. I’m booked to do a job of work, come what may. On this occasion we started with gesture drawing. I would be moving continuously, smoothly but very, very slowly throughout the length of the pose.
The drawing above was one young artist’s first attempt at this type of study. He even needed a quick Google image search for examples of what it’s supposed to be; yet I reckon this is as fair an execution as I have seen. We followed it with a sequence of four 3-minute poses that together showed a single developing position.
Next, for half an hour either side of our lunch break we took inspiration from an ‘After the bath‘ painting by Edgar Degas. In the absence of a bath towel I used my folded super-kingsize posing sheet as our prop. It meant I had to anchor one elbow into my side to support the extra weight, but the pose worked and the art was good.
My final pose was three-quarters of an hour laying face down. I was comfortable, I was warm and my mind was wandering freely. I have no idea if at any stage I dipped into a light sleep although I was aware I jolted slightly, just before the end. I’ll kid myself that I got away with it and hope my breathing didn’t become audibly snoozy.
New poses, new exercises, new contexts. Life modelling is as interesting, varied and challenging as ever.
What is the meaning of life… modelling? Maybe more a question of psychology than philosophy. I’ve mulled the matter previously on this blog: which flicked-switch in my mind, and the minds of those like me, drives us to a profession that most would shrink from in horror? I still don’t know; but it was time to go to a psychoanalyst’s.
So I went to the home of Sigmund Freud. It was after dark as I approached the only well-lit building in an otherwise shadowy residential street. I spotted gifted artist and occasional model Farida reading a noticeboard in front of the house. Simultaneously emerging through the gloom from the opposite direction was actress, model, milliner and star of burlesque, Ava Iscariot.
Ava Iscariot, drawing by @silveraj – © Aaron Jacob Jones
Together the three of us entered The Freud Museum.
The Freud Museum, at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, was the home of Sigmund Freud and his family when they escaped Austria following the Nazi annexation in 1938. It remained the family home until Anna Freud, the youngest daughter, died in 1982. The centrepiece of the museum is Freud’s study, preserved just as it was during his lifetime.
It contains Freud’s remarkable collection of antiquities: Egyptian; Greek; Roman and Oriental. Almost 2,000 items fill cabinets and are arranged on every surface. There are rows of ancient figures on the desk where Freud wrote until the early hours of the morning. The walls are lined with shelves containing Freud’s large library.
We had converged on the last residence of Sigismund Schlomo Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, not to discover our true natures but to be part of another legendary Art Macabre Drawing Salon. We found Nikki, aka Raven Rouge, the divine creator of these happenings, already deep in preparations with the museum’s staff.
Ava and I would be half of a four-strong modelling team while Farida would be helping Nikki manoeuvre groups of artists between different rooms of the museum. Soon we were joined by Maya – life model, wordsmith and genius of transformation – whom I had previously worked with on the Day of the Dead.
Maya, made death
We were shown to a back room with adjacent bathroom – complete with bath – where we could change and prepare. Ava immediately set up camp in the bathroom to begin a hair-to-toes metamorphosis in the style of a grey-painted, winged Weeping Angel. Maya stalked between rooms as she evolved, piece by piece, into an altogether more sinister figure. They would be posing together as Eros and Thanatos: the drive toward attraction and reproduction versus the drive toward repulsion and destruction.
This was our salon theme – FREUD MUSEUM: Eros and Death.
Maya and Ava, Thanatos and Eros
Our back room complement was completed with the arrival of partners in arts, Aaron and Raquel. Aaron would be on volunteer duties with Farida, and at free times adding more beautiful little masterpieces to his sketchbook. Multi-genre singer and art muse Raquel Merlot would be our fourth life model. As Ava and Maya continued meticulous preparations, Raquel simply got comfortable in a replica of Sigmund Freud’s famous chair and immersed herself in a book. Her poses would be nude and natural.
Raquel Merlot, drawing by @silveraj – © Aaron Jacob Jones
But while Raquel could be herself, I would be stripped of all ego and identity. I was to wear an expressionless white plastic mask and have white gauze netting draped over my head. For gratuitous embellishment I was given a necklace of tiny skulls and silver crosses, and Aaron painted my left arm white from shoulder to fingernails. Why not?
Throughout the hour we were getting ready I was rather keen to make swift use of the toilet. With our sole unisex bathroom continuously occupied by semi-naked women, however, it seemed poor form simply to wander in and express myself. Eventually I made pleading noises to a member of staff, who mercifully showed me to facilities on an upper floor. When I returned, the others had already gone to their pose spaces.
The eyes of Maya
Maya and Ava were facing-off in the first-floor Exhibition Room, Raquel was nursing a skeletal baby in Anna Freud’s Consulting Room, and I was to be in the front hallway posing before the sculpture ‘Remember that we sometimes…‘ by Rachel Kneebone (2014). The museum folk took pains to emphasise the desirability of me not breaking, touching, breathing-on, or in any way unnerving this valuable piece of art.
In front of ‘Remember that we sometimes…’, Rachel Kneebone (2014)
Nikki had divided her 65 artists into five colour-badged groups. These would be rotated around our poses every 15 to 25 minutes. At any given time two groups would be with Ava and Maya, one with Raquel, one with me and one sketching artefacts in Sigmund Freud’s study. When everyone else was in place Nikki came for me. She led me down carpeted stairs and left me in a standing pose with a skull and a small plastic hand.
How one artist imagined that small plastic hand…
The business-end of my evening had begun. Artists surrounded me, sitting on chairs or on the floor, or standing in the hallway or on the stairs. My poses were to be lithe, perhaps provocative, but not strenuous. As I found at Mediæval Monsters, however, there’s something rather claustrophobic about posing in a face mask for a complete session. By the end of the evening it was running with condensation from my breath.
Artists changed rooms between poses. Once they had settled, Nikki would walk from group to group, explaining to each the history of the space they were now in, and the significance of our life modelling in context. For example, during my second standing pose in the front hallway she drew attention to the multiple limbs and ‘phallic tendrils’ of Rachel Kneebone’s sculpture, and suggested the artists might like to incorporate similar ideas into their work.
Tendrils afoot
My third pose was seated on the floor; my fourth pose was laying down with one arm raised; my final pose returned to standing, once more clutching the skull and the little hand. There was no artistic need to vary my poses as it was a different pool of artists each time, but it didn’t do my circulation any harm to change limb positions when the chance arose.
Me drawn by @silveraj – © Aaron Jacob Jones
As the fifth pose ended, so did the evening’s art. I remained in my mask and draping but was otherwise still nude as I attempted a slow, dignified retreat to our back room. When the first floor was clear of artists we re-emerged to get a few photos whilst still in character. Nikki and Aaron had some shots of artworks too, but alas this wasn’t a venue where time permitted drawings to be laid out for all to admire.
Eros and roses
Back at the bathroom those of us in body paint crowded round the sink and tub. With just one arm needing a rinse, I dipped in and out as quickly as possible so Maya and Ava could continue their more thorough ablutions undisturbed.
Raquel, Aaron and Farida had left by the time the rest of us were ready. Nikki, Maya, Ava and I grabbed some last photos outside the museum before departing south and north: Ava and Maya to Finchley Road, Nikki and me to Finchley Road & Frognal.
Nikki indicates where her own blue plaque belongs
Later Nikki would reflect:
“When I studied Freud at A Level psychology, I don’t think I could have imagined that one day I’d be creating art at Freud’s study and home with nude models!
“What a privilege tonight was! 65 artists capturing our 4 models posing throughout the rooms of Freud’s past home and workplace, alongside amazing art such as Rachel Kneebone sculpture.“
I replied in kind:
“And who knew when I was studying physics that one day I’d be a 6’4″ naked mannequin, draped like Mother Teresa, in Sigmund Freud’s front hallway?“
I’m still no closer to arriving at a true meaning, but for now it’s better to travel.
5 August 2014 – “Hi Lisa, Apologies if you’ve had a few messages like this today…”
An unseen facet of being a life model is sending speculative emails to art classes and groups whenever a call-out appears. Likely as not in most cases we won’t even get an acknowledgement, let alone a booking, but we give it a go. None of us are owed.
5 January 2015 – “Hi Steve, I would love you to model for us this term…”
It was a great surprise, therefore, when out of the blue in early January I got a reply to an email I’d sent five months earlier. Furthermore, two emails later that same evening, arrangements were settled: I would début at The Prince Regent pub in Herne Hill for SketchPad Drawing on 28 January. Very much worth the wait!
I arrived plenty early to find Lisa setting up easels in irregular arrangements around the sides of two adjoining rooms on the pub’s first floor. I did what little I could to help with preparations while we chatted about the format and poses.
There would be two models: myself and Ruby. We would each work a separate room, swapping over at half time. This seemed to me a very good way of accommodating up to 40 artists in the space available. They would each have an easel and a comfortable, clear view of a model.
Lisa said she had been running classes for 10 years. The experience had given her an instinctive understanding of what she could ask and reasonably expect from models in different situations. She demonstrated the poses she would like me to try in relation to the furniture and fittings of the room, all aimed at accentuating the length of my limbs.
I opened with a 15-minute seated pose, styled to look impatient, then raced through a dynamic standing sequence of 5 minutes, 2, 2, 1, 1 and 1 minute. Finally for this pool of artists I stood for half an hour with hands on hips and a twist at the waist.
The breadth of artistic styles on show was unexpected and impressive. I met Ruby for the first time in the doorway between rooms and we talked a while about modelly stuff. After the break she curled into a single long seated pose on the platform of tables that I’d vacated earlier.
Meanwhile, I was to pose for 15 minutes standing – a rather painful back-bending high reach up to the ceiling lights – and 25 minutes laying with my body on a footstool and my legs splayed across an armchair.
When all was done I bantered with artists, just as I had at the end of the first session. Everybody was so kind and complimentary, a couple even going so far as to say they hoped they could draw me again some time. Certainly I would jump at any chance for a return visit. Lisa seemed positive, so who knows? Let’s see what next term brings.
That moment you walk through a familiar doorway and immediately sense something unfamiliar about the place you’ve entered… such a moment I experienced on my first visit of 2015 to the A-side B-side Gallery.
The beaming welcome from artist and group leader Catherine Hall, from the centre of the room, was exactly as I remembered yet all around seemed different. First I noticed there were twice as many easels. Furthermore they were all new modern black frames rather than the heavy old wooden variety.
The entrance desk was on the right instead of the left. Oh, and the walls had all been painted! And the floor. And there was a portable wooden step with a crimson cushion for models to pose on. And a black curtain as backdrop. In fact, everything about the space was pristine and plush.
It was heart-warming to see. The gallery and its life drawing group are flourishing, and well deserve to be. With Catherine’s keen, clear, one-to-one expert guidance this is a group where amateur artists can improve their basic skills and enjoy learning a broad spectrum of new drawing techniques without pressure or judgement.
Seven of the eight expected artists arrived; we set to work. My first standing pose of 6 minutes was to be drawn blind – eyes to the model, not to the paper. An extraordinary array of forms were created: some surprisingly proportional, others capturing pleasing details, and yet others with a multiplicity of lines that created an animation effect.
We raced through three poses of 30 seconds, two of a minute and three of 3 minutes. These were to hone the eye and line; the essential form was to be outlined within the first 10 seconds. After such intensity we slowed right down with a leisurely 20-minute seated pose that took us to a break.
We resumed with two poses of 10 minutes each before seeing out the evening with a half-hour long pose. For the first 10 minutes, Catherine asked me for a standing pose that incorporated a straight line, so I reached my left arm back to hold a ceiling pillar, then leaned forward.
Left arm and pillar were straight lines forming a right angle from one perspective, with my right arm forming another right angle across my chest. 10 minutes was about my limit for holding that one.
Come 9pm we were done for the evening. Artworks were admired, fixed with spray and rolled up to be taken home. The artists kindly said their thank-yous and – I hope – left satisfied with a positive two hours of creative outpouring.
I wondered whether many of them go to other life drawing groups in London. Possibly not; so if they value being part of an easy-going, pleasant group with constant variety, challenges and progression supported by personalised tips and encouragement, then they may not know quite how lucky they are.
It was fantastic to see more people making the discovery, and the A-side B-side itself with a bright make-over befitting a bright future.
Time passed 1pm. The merciless minute-hand was racing away from its ponderous little friend as I dressed, bade farewell to the receptionist at Albemarle College, and rapidly descended the steps into Marble Arch station. I was expected at The Book Club in Shoreditch before 2 o’clock.
As one life modelling job ends, so another begins.
At Albemarle I’d posed my unadorned body for four art students simply to observe and capture creatively. Life at the Book Club, however, would be very, very different. Here be monsters… moreover, mediæval monsters presented by Art Macabre in a sell-out ticketed event for between forty and fifty artists.
I made it there in good time for our 2pm start but the pressure was off anyway. My co-model for the afternoon – Melissa – was already on the scene, her lower half in period costume and upper half midway through being body-painted by Art Macabre creative czar, Nikki aka Raven Rouge.
Melissa would be portraying a complete menagerie of monsters during the first hour whereas after the break I would have but one universal role: the medico della peste… the pestarzt… the médico de la peste negra… the Plague Doctor.
The most iconic feature of a mediæval plague doctor is his beaklike mask. But how does one acquire such an extraordinary leather proboscis in this day and age? One looks no further than Art Macabre’s maker magnifica: Linsay.
For this special occasion she had surpassed herself to create an object of exquisite glory. Perfectly shaped, handsomely stitched, with glass eye-pieces to the fore and brass buckle fastening at the back, it would be my absolute privilege to model it – a work of art in its own right.
Death drawing enthusiasts were already upon our inner basement wall like bees over honeycomb as the more delicate details of Melissa’s headdress were being finessed into position. Linsay opened the doors and artists meandered in to seek comfortable vantage amid a cluster of tealights and chairs.
When the hubbubbing hoi polloi had hushed, Nikki strode out to our low corner stage. Beyond the curtains of our dim crimson ‘green room’, she welcomed artists and whet their appetites for astonishing sights to come. Melissa then emerged in full mediæval costume and posed as if listening to the whispers of a skull.
This first pose was just a gentle scene-setter lasting three minutes. The second pose, however, whilst only lasting four minutes was more like a mediæval torture: in a static dance of death, Melissa would hold the skull high aloft and gaze into its eyes. Only four minutes? Go on, try it.
After the longest four minutes of her life, Melissa lowered her arm; lowered herself into sitting position; and Nikki lowered Melissa’s top for a semi-naked pose of five minutes as ‘the mandrake‘. This presented the first major test of imagination for our artists: to depict her as half woman, half plant.
Pose complete, Melissa uprooted and shed the last of her clothes, then turned away from the audience to reveal a broad face painted across her back. For seven minutes she would be a Blemmye – artists were asked to imagine her with no head at all.
Next came one for the purist: a virgin. Not necessarily the Virgin, but certainly a virgin in a pose of seven minutes, complete with black-feathered companion. Upon finishing this, her penultimate pose, Melissa stole backstage for a last change of costume.
Off came the horns that she’d been wearing up until then, and onto her head went the foam-made crown of a unicorn. Returning to the stage, she closed the first half of our session with a candle-cradling 10-minute seated pose.
It had been a real tour de force from Melissa, all the more impressive for being her life modelling début. For my turn, I was stripped nude, put into a long black cape and the plague doctor mask, had another black cloth draped over my head, and was pressed under a wide-brimmed black hat. That was me sorted.
With grotesque black claws on one hand and a long cane in the other, I was ready to meet my public. Nikki lead me onto the stage, introducing my character both visually and verbally, then left me in pose for an opening 10 minutes.
After five motionless minutes, I started to ponder silently the possibility of suffocating in my mask and collapsing. I had become aware that my inward breaths were getting warmer and warmer as I recycled my own trapped carbon dioxide. What to do? Keep calm and carry on, of course.
I didn’t collapse. Whilst it might have afforded excellent opportunities for the artists to observe a long reclining pose, it would have been rather unprofessional and somewhat undignified. The 10 minutes raced by as I mulled such thoughts.
My second and final pose would again be standing, but this time 25 minutes, facing a different direction with a different stance. I found a good supported position and drifted into ‘the zone’, whatever that might be. I was savouring the weirdness of it all.
Never before had I imagined myself stark naked save a cape and a leather mask on a London stage, standing before a live audience. Do not presume to know your destiny; life can always take you beyond the limit of your expectations.
I could have stood there for ages. The hour of our ending was upon us, however, and Nikki drew the session to its close. Applause was very generous, and well deserved for Melissa and Raven Rouge. As is customary, Nikki invited all the artists to lay out their work around the room.
I was keen to join in the admiration, but first had to stumble backstage and somehow extricate myself from mediæval bondage. The claw and mask were both affectionately and stubbornly attached. By adding brute force to my ignorance – whilst taking great care not to damage the mask – eventually I got free.
When Nikki booked me for this event she had promised to make me “unrecognisable”. Proof of her success, as I returned in clothes to photograph the art, was that a couple of artists spoke to me about the plague doctor as “he”. Erm… that was me!
This was my tenth Art Macabre death drawing salon. Whilst not their most glamorous location or the most challenging poses, it was perhaps the most enjoyable day so far. Well worth a dash from 21st century west end London into mediæval east end murk.
p.s. this last drawing? By Melissa.
Return to college. It had taken two years, six months for my first college life model booking to arrive. A mere ten weeks later I was back for my second, posing again at Albemarle College on their first Saturday after the winter break.
Once more Susan was tutor and four students were attending – albeit one out, one in from last time. We’d made provision for me to be working from 9:45am to 1:15pm, but in practice it was more like 10am to 1pm with a 15 minute break an hour from the end.
To get the students warmed up after weeks away, Susan called for four contrapposto studies. As my natural standing position always appears to be contrapposto, this was not too tough a call. For added variety I faced west, north, east, south in poses lasting 5, 5, 10 and 10 minutes.
That done, we moved onto the main work: a single long seated pose of an hour before the break, resuming for 45 minutes after the break. First I would be sketched in rough outline, then given colour with yellow, red and blue oil pastels to be used for light, mid and dark shading.
Works had progressed very nicely up to the break.
Upon resuming, more intense colour blocking was added using oilbars and the whole was brushed into life with white spirit. I was comfortably stationed with no numbness, aches or strains but as with any long spell in one position, my muscles sighed at the variety when eventually they were allowed to move.
I had not seen this kind of artistic development before. The students would be adding background and finishing touches after I’d left so I was rather sorry that I wouldn’t get to see the completed compositions. I had a prior engagement at the opposite side of the city, however, and only an hour to get there.
A life model’s work…
steve ritter 