For their last gathering before Christmas, Candid Arts Friday Life Drawing Meetup invited Spirited Bodies to present a ‘Have I Got Nudes for You‘ session, in which life models interpret topical events through dynamic poses and a light-hearted news quiz. Esther would lead the session, with me supporting, and Reni – a guest model – also lending her talents. We arrived early to organise our joyously low-budget props.
We had selected a mixture of well-known and obscure news stories from the past six months, with the only essential criterion being a potential for interesting poses. At the end of year in which Brexit, the election and Donald Trump have all been relentlessly and ever-more depressingly reported, we opted to steer clear of all three (well, it was Christmas after all). We began with eight short poses, asking a question about each.
Pose I – 5 minutes
For our first pose, Reni put on an inflatable gold crown and proceeded to shred a copy of the Mail on Sunday before posing with its trashed fragments…
October 2019: Meghan sues the Mail on Sunday.
It was announced that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex would be suing the publisher of the Mail on Sunday after it printed a handwritten letter she’d sent to her estranged father. Prince Harry attacked the tabloid press on behalf of his wife, saying he could no longer be “a silent witness to her private suffering”.
Question: 1. What was Meghan’s maiden name before she married Harry?
Meghan sues Mail on Sunday, October 2019
Pose II – 5 minutes
Next, Reni and I posed as if walking with great care along a narrow strip of cling film, which served as an improvised glass bridge…
October 2019: Chinese province closes its glass bridges.
It emerged that the Chinese province of Hebei had quietly closed all 32 of its glass bridges, walkways and mountain viewing platforms for safety reasons. This followed a series of accidents across the country, including at least two deaths, that called into question the safety of glass structures.
Question: 2. Who is the current president of China?
Pose III – 5 minutes
Esther then took to the stage as a footballer unsure whether to celebrate while I stood nearby as the referee, whistle in mouth, scrutinising a TV screen…
October 2019: VAR divides opinion in English football.
Video Assistant Referees (VARs) were introduced to the English football Premier League as means of dealing with “clear and obvious errors” or “serious missed incidents”, but in practice it has caused frustration due to the delays in reaching a decision, the lack of information for fans, and even some mistakes.
Question: 3. How many clubs are in the English football Premier League?
Pose IV – 5 minutes
Before our fourth pose I dotted myself all over with the tip of a red lipstick, then fled in fear as Reni came charging at me with a vaccination syringe held aloft…
August 2019: Sharp rise in measles cases in England.
Cases of measles in England are rising sharply amid fears that growing numbers of people are not getting immunised because of “dangerous” myths about vaccines. Of 301 people diagnosed with measles between April and June, 266 were aged 15 years or over and had not been vaccinated.
Question: 4. What 3-letter acronym is a common name for the measles vaccine?
Pose V – 5 minutes
While I struggled to wash-off the lipstick in the bathroom, pigtailed Esther posed solo sitting on a blue plastic bucket with “POO’S ONLY PLEASE” written on the side…
August 2019: Greta Thunberg sails the Atlantic.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg set sail from Plymouth for New York on a zero-carbon yacht with her father and a two-man crew. The yacht was designed for speed rather than luxury, which meant no shower and famously only a blue plastic bucket labelled “POO’S ONLY PLEASE” for Greta’s toilet.
Question: 5. How old is Greta Thunberg? Bonus point for her date of birth.
Pose VI – 5 minutes
Esther and Reni held aloft a solidarity banner proclaiming ‘#EnaZeda‘ in both English and Tunisian Arabic, while I cowered shamefully with a bottle between my legs…
December 2019: Tunisian #EnaZeda protests.
Photos MP Zouheir Makhlouf allegedly masturbating in a car outside a high school in Tunisia prompted women to share their own stories of abuse and harassment using the hashtag #EnaZeda, which means “MeToo” in Tunisian Arabic. The MP said he was just trying to urinate into a bottle as he is a diabetic.
Question: 6. In which year did activist Tarana Burke first post ‘#MeToo’?
Pose VII – 10 minutes
For a surreal tableau, Esther modelled a pair of white knickers with a hole burnt in the front whilst I sat on the floor contemplating an up-ended herb bottle…
November 2019: Turnip Prize winner announced.
This year’s spoof Turner Prize – called the ‘Turnip Prize’, for “crap art” made using “the least amount of effort possible” – was awarded for a pair of knickers with a burnt hole in the front, titled ‘Bush Fire Down Under’. Other notable entries included a full bottle of the herb thyme spilled onto a sheet of paper.
Question: 7. What name was given to the installation featuring the spilt herb?
Pose VIII – 10 minutes
As a dramatic finale for our quiz, Esther hurled an entire milkshake up the front of my body and thus we stood while it dripped slowly onto the newspaper-covered floor…
June 2019: 8. Farage gets his cleaning bill paid after milkshake attack.
On 20 May, Paul Crowther hurled his £5.25 milkshake up the front of Nigel Farage as the latter campaigned in Newcastle. A court later ordered Crowther to do 150 hours unpaid work and pay £520, including £350 compensation to Farage for damage, distress, inconvenience and cleaning.
Question: 8. What two flavours were the milkshake that was hurled at Farage?
Pose IX – 19 minutes
We took a short break drinks break, then Esther invited anyone to join her in creating a tableau of chimps / politicians as a homage to ‘Devolved Parliament‘ by Banksy.
Pose X – 19 minutes
Popular uprisings were the themes of our final two group poses. To begin, Esther and invitees took up umbrellas in the style of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists…
Hong Kong’s umbrella revolution, September 2019
Pose XI – 15 minutes
Concluding the evening, I returned to fray and held aloft an Extinction Rebellion sign while others posed as protesters with hands glued to surfaces…
Quiz answers
After this final pose, I read out answers to all the earlier quiz questions. How well did you do in our news challenge?
Answer 1: Markle
Answer 2: Xi Jinping
Answer 3: 20
Answer 4: MMR
Answer 5: 16 – born on 3 January 2003
Answer 6: 2006
Answer 7: ‘A Complete Waste of Thyme’
Answer 8: Banana and Salted Caramel
The knowledgeable winner received two free tickets for future Spirited Bodies events, the next of which is set be Body Narratives with London Drawing on 25 January. If artist numbers there match those we had here, it’ll be another special occasion. I had been worried that attendance might be low this close to Christmas, so it was inspiring to see almost thirty people join us. I hope they warmed to our unorthodox ways.
Certainly many of their artworks captured the energy we tried to convey. A few artists sketched elements of different poses onto a single sheet, thereby effectively creating news montages. Just as we models look for new ways of energising artists, so artists continue surprising us with the imagination and talent in their interpretations. It was a grand way to finish life modelling in 2019. Let’s hope 2020 is as much fun.
Which garments to select for my ‘clothed/ or costumed/ partially nude‘ model booking at Blue Zoo Animation Studio? They favour items: “light in color so that we can see the fabric in the light of the room, but if you don’t have anything light that’s fine too as long as it looks interesting; we also like clothes that compliment your body shape.”
Latching onto the ‘light in colour‘ part of my brief, I decided to take it to its extreme by donning a 100% white ensemble that I last wore at a cacao ceremony four years ago. As a back-up, I also took a highly patterned top and trouser pairing, in case the white was a bit too boring. I needn’t have worried, though: white was just right.
As is often the way with animators, their preference was lots of quick dynamic poses, and that was my preference too. We started: 3-minutes, 3, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8-minutes, then took a short break. We finished: 10-minutes, 10, 11, 10, 10, 10 and 2-minutes. It was energising but also a nice winding-down at the end of their – and my – working day.
Superb drawings by Wei Wu: instagram.com/weitoocool / twitter.com/weitoocool
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.
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.
If you ask life models about the personal benefits of nude modelling, most are likely to talk about inward things like improved self-confidence, body acceptance and personal development on a physical, mental, spiritual and emotional level. But I also appreciate the places it’s taken me – parts of cities I would never otherwise visit – and the people I’ve met. So now when I travel, I keep an eye out for life modelling opportunities.
The familiar profile of Table Mountain looming over Cape Town, South Africa
A less familiar outline of Table Mountain from the Observatory district
Ahead of our trip to South Africa, Esther and I contacted The Artists’ Co-operative based in the Observatory district of Cape Town, to ask if they might be interested in drawing us as a couple. They were, so after exchanging several messages, an event was arranged at Observatory Community Centre. This was to be a special session, which meant no local models missed out on their regular paid work.
Observatory Community Hall, Cape Town
Observatory is Cape Town’s Bohemian suburb. We arrived early by Uber to avoid the city’s notorious rush hour traffic and also to have a little look about. After an excellent veggie meal and wine around the corner at Mimi’s, we walked to our venue. Helpfully our contact, Terence, just happened to be outside the entrance at the time. He guided us to the art room and introduced us to the group.
The art room
Special guest model!
Once everyone who’d been expected was present, we settled comfortably together on a sheet-covered sofa. The group was friendly and welcoming, but when the art started they drifted into a quiet focus – the only noise came from window shutters that banged in the wind. We remained motionless for the first hour of what would be a 2-hour pose, with a tea break midway. Excellent works had already emerged by half-time.
During the half-hour internal we joined our artists at the kitchen end of the studio and talked about Cape Town’s art scene. I felt somewhat anomalous as I seemed to be a male model in a room festooned with female-only life studies – possibly symptomatic of male artists outnumbering females two-to-one. Nonetheless, life drawing seems to be thriving here, with several groups meeting regularly. All very encouraging.
Artwork by Terence Visagie
Artwork by Hilary Iwanski
Our sofa was covered with bits of masking tape – legacy place-markers for countless previous models – but we located the ones relevant to us and got into position for our last hour. A couple of stretches for stiff necks and numb arms got us to the finish. The session was unremarkable in its demands on us as models, but I think enriching as a fresh experience for all concerned. There were lots of smiles at the end.
Artwork by Andrew Berman
After a chilly traipse through the dull, damp streets of Bermondsey, I was surprised to find the cavernous ground floor area of 47/49 Tanner Street comfortably warm. I laid my white sheet on the floor, undressed and commenced with four 5-minute poses.
This was my first time here since February so I wasn’t self-conscious about re-using poses I’d come up with since then, and subsequently deployed across London. It was all new stuff as far as Tanner Street Life Drawing was concerned.
After further poses of 10 and 15-minutes, we took a short break for tea and chocolate digestives. Some striking artworks were already emerging; not least those drawn with marker pen on reflective gold or ombre glitter card. I’d never seen the like before.
For a final long pose, I sat on the group’s newly acquired platform work bench. I soon found it had a slight propensity for creaking, so staying still was never more important. 50-minutes and just two creaks later, my work was done. It went well.
I arrived at the entrance gate to cave just in time to catch group organiser, Karen tell one of her artists: “we’re due to start in five minutes but I’m a bit worried because our model, Steve, isn’t here yet.” In best seasonal panto style, I boomed: “Oh yes he is!”
Vagaries of the Jubilee and Victoria line had slowed my progress – in an unexpected encounter, I’d almost knocked over Hesketh Hubbard Art Society president, Simon as I dashed between platforms – but we started on time with five 1-minute poses.
Two 5-minute poses and two 10-minute poses took us to a break. Karen served wine and various confections to her bumper turn-out of artists, and we had time for a good catch-up natter. There was lots of positivity in the house.
We resumed with a 25-minute pose that may have drifted closer to half-an-hour, but I was comfortable and all was well. A 20-minute pose concluded the session. So much colour, vigour and quality in the resultant artworks! A lovely evening all-round.
steve ritter 