It’s a strange psychology that has one inwardly celebrating the end of a working week while jaunting towards a portrait art session that will require one to stare motionlessly at some vague middle-distant locus for two hours. Compared with the challenging and dynamic requirements of life modelling, this may seem to be a lazy option or an easy option, but I assure you not. Both effort and focus are very much needed.
This was my fourth time portrait modelling for Hesketh Hubbard Art Society at Mall Galleries. As before, shirt selection was a key consideration – I opted for purple with no collar. At the venue itself my only concern was to ensure sufficient soft padding on the wooden seat that I would occupy for two hour-long sittings with a 15-minute break. Come 7pm, having safeguarded my comfort as best I could, the job commenced.
As I stared beyond short-sighted blurriness at some unidentified dark smudge upon a far balcony – my gaze point for the evening – so a dozen pairs of eyes began to gaze back at me, each of them scrutinising my every line, shadow, glint and tone. I’m past finding this disconcerting and have instead learned how to appreciate those long hard stares with almost detached amusement.
Discomforts endured at various stages included: facial itches that would come and go, possibly abetted by my long hair; aching ankles where my legs were crossed beneath the chair; and of course a gentle numbing of the posterior. Artists remained diligent till they could improve me no further, at which point they softly packed and quit their post. Many thanks to those that stayed the course, creating such fine facsimiles.
The Bolton, near Earl’s Court tube station, is the furthest west I’ve travelled to model for one of Adrian Dutton’s life drawing groups. Entering this grand old London pub at a quarter to seven, I gravitated intuitively up to the first floor and found their function room all set for creating art. The successful format used at Adrian’s other venues was to be reproduced here, so at 7pm we started with a warm-up 10-minute standing pose (with candelabra), and then continued: 3-minutes, 3, 3, 5, 15 and 20-minutes.
I had a couple of close encounters in the two poses before our break. Whilst sitting on the floor for 15-minutes I glimpsed a little black multi-legged thing crawling towards my buttocks. Without my glasses, I couldn’t tell if it was a spider or a fly – a swift tensing of muscles would spook the latter, but spiders can be trickier to shift. Mercifully it was a fly. Next, whilst standing I got a bump on the buttocks when an artist ran across the pose space to answer her phone, catching me with her drawing board on the way…
Two 30-minute poses completed our evening’s work after the break. A long bench with faux-leather padding was brought in to be my new platform at the centre of the room. I opted first to be seated, then finished by reclining along its length. I felt comfortable in each pose, and at the end appreciated an artist’s compliment that I’d been “as still as a glacier” – in other words, acknowledged to be moving but not sufficiently perceptible for anyone to care about. A very apt analogy for the reality of life modelling.
For my debut life modelling in a function room upstairs at the Royal Inn on the Park, I opted to begin with a new 10-minute pose: my right leg would be bent yet supporting my full weight, my left leg would also be bent and on tip-toe, and my left arm would be raised as if fending off danger from above. I should have foreseen the main danger was in fact an achy right leg that would fibrillate throughout the remainder of the first half…
This venue now hosts Adrian Dutton’s life drawing sessions on Thursday evenings. While the space was new to me, the format and many of the artists were reassuringly familiar. I followed the opening pose with three poses of 3-minutes, plus one each of 5, 15 and 20-minutes up to the interval. I took care to protect the weakened leg, but then ended up with dead arms when I reclined with them resting upon a wooden chair.
Artists vanished downstairs to buy more drinks. Meanwhile I was asked how I felt the Royal Inn compared with Adrian’s previous Thursday venue, Eastbourne House. After a moment’s reflection, I lamented only that complimentary cheese and wine could no longer be an option. Beyond that, each place has its own pros and cons. Purely from a life modelling perspective, I found it very comfortable here.
Two poses of 30-minutes concluded our evening’s work. Drawings were spread on the floor for general admiration and, as I roamed about, one woman told me I was the first male model she’d ever drawn. This was only her fifth time life drawing, yet already her work was of a very high standard. Similar for other artists who hadn’t previously drawn me. Reassuringly familiar or refreshingly new, it seems there’s a lot of talent out there.
Upon arrival at the Exhibit B bar (a “youth club for adults“) in Streatham, I found group facilitator, artist and fellow life model, Lily Holder applying the finishing touches to her preparations for this evening’s Life Drawing at Exhibit B. For me, it was a first return since I’d modelled at the inaugural session here in November last year. Boxes of art materials were already arranged immaculately, just as they were nine months earlier.
At 7:30pm Lily pulled a large black curtain across to separate our life drawing from the rest of the bar. She explained that for the first half of this session she would be setting exercises for the artists. So for example, after a 7-minute warm-up and three 2-minute poses, the next three 1-minute poses were all to be overlaid on top of each other – as per above – and then a 3-minute pose (below) was drawn without looking at the paper.
For the 6-minute pose that followed, Lily asked her horseshoe of artists to spend their first minute simply looking at me without making any marks on the paper and then, in the second minute, the challenge was to try representing me with only four geometric shapes. Another minute was spent looking again, and after that they were free to add as many more shapes as they wished…
5-minute, 6-minute, and 3-minute poses – each with their own specific accompanying exercise – took us to the end of the first half. After a break we completed the session with two more poses: 20-minutes, and 30-minutes. For the former, Lily suggested that artists commence with a fully shaded sheet, then spend five minutes erasing light and five minutes shading dark. The final pose of the evening was fully freestyle.
For a class of this type, in which the organiser is talking and setting tasks throughout, artists have to be totally bought into the idea. Certainly it seemed to me that everyone present was up for it and having a fine time. As the model, I also found it inspiring; our two hours raced by. I’d not seen Lily since we were part of Art Macabre: In Voluptas Mors last December, so it was great to find her on form. Strong energy in the room.
It used to be that I might only get to pose at The Workshop in Geffrye Street, Hoxton once every six months at most. Now, since the loss of his Eastbourne House venue in Bethnal Green, Adrian Dutton has life drawing sessions there twice a week, which in turn meant this Tuesday booking fell within a mere month of my last Monday one.
The pose lengths varied only slightly from my previous visit. First, 10-minutes standing then three poses of 3-minutes each, two of 5-minutes, and two of 15-minutes that took us up to an interval. Artists seemed to be joining us constantly throughout the opening pose until, with about 35 present, we were at capacity. Just as well no more arrived.
During our break, I cleared my pose space in the centre of the room so a trestle table could be brought out and loaded with loaves and dip to feed the multitude. Socialising and eating occupied the next half-hour, after which the room was reset and I resumed with a 30-minute standing pose with my right hand resting on top of a stick.
The most extraordinary aspect of this standing pose was that my hands and both feet went numb. In all my years of life modelling, numbness had never struck me quite like this before. I even wondered if I might collapse when the pose ended and I had to alter position. Fortunately I was able to make a very slow, controlled descent to ground.
A 30-minute seated pose completed the evening’s travails. Artists were encouraged to place their drawings on the floor and I was hugely gratified to discover strong works all around the room. With Esther here to draw me too, and notwithstanding a few tingling extremities, this had been a particularly pleasing session.
With warm sunshine streaming in through The Dellow Centre windows, I took off my robe, entered the round of artists, grasped a wooden stick across both shoulders, and commenced the opening 15-minute standing pose. It is a pose I enjoy and a good one to hold whilst artists are still arriving. We followed it with no fewer than 10 quick poses that began 3-minutes, 2-minutes, 1-minute, decreasing in length down to 7-seconds.
After this frenetic sequence, we completed the first half with two poses of 20-minutes each – back to basics for life drawing traditionalists, and a period of focused study for those who like to exercise their imaginations and draw more than what they see. One artist used this time to represent me as a kind of elf king, resplendent with crown and pencil sceptre; not my usual daywear…
A mug of tea and a couple of digestive biscuits later, we resumed after the break with a 5-minute movement pose. Tim, the life drawing session organiser, called out time checks every 60 seconds while I slowly, slowly, slowly turned 360°, rising, unravelling, stretching, curling, reaching. A couple of artists had murmured low groans on hearing that a movement pose was coming, but others met the challenge magnificently.
The session concluded with a 40-minute long seated pose, side-saddle on a wooden chair, twisting my torso round to the right. A 40-minute body twist is usually good for an ache or two but with a folded sheet under my backside and a cushion beneath an arm that I’d hooked over the chair’s back, I felt comfortable. Lovely feedback from the artists rounded off a nice afternoon.
Mid-August, mid-holiday season, is often a low point for life drawing group attendance numbers yet there was a respectable showing of local artists for my summer return to The Beehive for Tottenham Art Classes. They selected their free drawing materials, then settled down nice and prompt for organiser Taz to begin proceedings at 7pm.
Promptness was critical as we started with the shortest poses: 1-minute, 2, 3, 4, and 5-minutes. Anybody turning up quarter of an hour late would have missed exactly half our evening’s offerings. I finished the first period with two 15-minute poses, and one of 10-minutes. After the break, two 20-minute poses brought the session to a close.
I last attended this venue on the occasion of the group’s fourth birthday, duo modelling with Esther on 18 January. A few works from that session had made it onto the walls of their Two Hours : To Ours exhibition at Craving Coffee in May. Hopefully some of the works I didn’t get a chance to see here this evening will make it to the next one.
steve ritter 