Dig, if you will, the picture…
It’s a glorious Sunday afternoon in late July. Shafts of sunlight pierce the verdant canopy of a heavily wooded urban cemetery. Crows caw. Amidst the beautiful chaos of ancient tombstones transfixed in eternal decline, there is a small clearing. Warmth rises from the fragrant earth and envelops two nude models, who stand serene in the stillness of nature. Their finely poised bodies, caressed by golden rays, are attended closely by artists who capture the delicate magic of this rare moment.
Reality bites
From leaden skies the frigid rain spattered my black umbrella as I stood hunched at the entrance to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. Not long after arriving I was joined by the markedly more colourful, but no less damp, Nikki of Art Macabre. Together with Carmen Mon Oxide – operatic cabaret singer and some-time art model – we would be providing outdoor life drawing as part of east London’s Shuffle Festival.
Nikki and I paused to exchange looks that acknowledged both the insanity of what we were about do, and the certain knowledge that we would still go ahead and do it.
We found our small clearing; not too muddy underfoot. Its perimeter of trees afforded us a modicum of cover from the persistent drizzle. After Nikki had chosen a couple of prime spots for our poses we hastened back to the shelter of a nearby community building, where we were joined by Carmen, and later by Alex and Ian – our volunteer helpers for the day.
Elemental
When we returned to the clearing I was clad in nothing more substantial than a top hat, my lightweight navy dressing gown, and sandals. Carmen was resplendent in a black bonnet, long brunette wig – concealing her superb blue hair – and a light pink gown with matching pink DMs. We’d made an effort, even if the weather had not.
Barely a minute or two had passed when Alex and Ian arrived with 15-20 artists they’d collected from the main entrance. Three long wooden benches were arranged for them in an arc around the gravestones and woodpile that would be the backdrop to our first poses. When everyone was settled with drawing materials at the ready, Nikki began her introductions.
Carmen and I looked at one another, smirked and nodded. Our time had arrived. We shrugged off our gowns, rolled them into a plastic bin-liner, and strode naked into the arena. To begin we would be posing either side of a solitary tombstone. Over many decades this cold slab had stood unmoved by encroaching nature and the ravages of capricious weather; we merely had to hold there for 5 minutes.
It was a chilly business, and no mistake. Mercifully the rain had eased to a slight spitting, hardly forceful enough to penetrate our shield of leaves and branches, but sufficient to coalesce into large drops that would occasionally splash icily upon our bare skin. Worse than the rain was a stern breeze that would find us out from time to time, making the temperature feel considerably less than the forecast 14°C.
Next came a 10-minute pose with Carmen seated on log, cradling a bundle of white rags, while I craned over her to gaze at our imaginary baby. Nikki was weaving a tale and orchestrating our poses: arranging the tableau, supplying us props, adding or taking away costume accessories. The artists huddled over their drawing materials, shielding them against random showers, but staying staunch with us throughout.
© artist emilietune
Truly we faced the primitive elements: sky-clad in the open air; damp earth clinging beneath our feet; fine water falling upon our bodies; and incongruously, in the next clearing, beekeepers smoking their hives – where there’s smoke, surely there is a smoulder of fire. We would have welcomed a nice roaring fire to thaw our bones just then, but our work was not yet halfway done.
© artist Florence Goodhand-Tait
Shiver me timbers
Our final 10-minute pose at this location saw us separated. Carmen stood upon a tree stump to my left, while I stepped onto a woodpile. Once again props and accessories were changed. I was given a mask to wear – which afforded the unexpected bonus of allowing me to warm my face with my own breath – plus some colourful cloth to hold close about my shoulders like wings.
After this there was a brief interlude while the artists’ benches were shifted to face an interesting collection of sawn-off upright tree trunks. I kept a blanket wrapped snugly around me and privately hoped these manoeuvres would take a good long while. It was a false comfort, however, as for the next 10 minutes I would be posing solo without a stitch of clothing, and thus felt the cold more keenly than ever.
Nikki had cast me as Charon, ferryman of Hades, carrying the souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron. A long fallen branch served as the pole with which I propelled my imaginary boat. I leaned onto it, as though pushing away from the world of the living, and hoped the tension in my limbs would generate some internal heat… but I suspect it merely accentuated my little shivers.
© artist Svetlana Radionovskaya
With that pose, however, my work was done. Carmen closed our session, standing upright with her face veiled and her hands clutching a golden skull. For both the first and last pose, she performed an operatic accompaniment to music downloaded onto Nikki’s phone. At times her atmospheric voice resonated with such power among the trees and tombs that I wondered whether an audience might assemble.
© artist Florence Goodhand-Tait
It was a privilege to hear her sing, as it had been when we last worked together, for Masques and the Macabre at Somerset House. Where my limbs had trembled, Carmen’s voice remained steady and strong. When her 10 minutes were over, the artists were ready with warm applause, and I was ready with her gown and a warm blanket. We’d survived.
© artist Svetlana Radionovskaya
Final resting place
Back in the community building we dressed and relaxed. Despite there being a busy kitchen in the hall, it somehow proved impossible for us to get a cup of tea. Carmen managed to go one better, however, claiming a portion of the hot curry and rice that was simmering on a table for festival staff. Alex and Ian said their goodbyes, leaving me, Carmen and Nikki to set off spontaneously for a nearby pub.
At the Wentworth Arms, we made up for in beer and wine what we’d lacked in tea. It’s a grand thing to endure the minor discomforts of a mediocre British summer, and then celebrate in excellent company. As much as I love life modelling, some jobs are better for having been done than they are in the doing. It had been a great day out for all that, and I hope the artists got just as much of a kick from its quirky uniqueness.
When a month’s worth of rain falls in just one day, it’s bound to have an influence on artistic inspiration. I was sitting opposite Amanda of Feel Good Painting, drinking tea and mulling ideas for our latest relaxed evening of body art. Behind us, a heavy downpour was blurring the windowpane.
“It’s got to be something underwater,” said Amanda.
Once a theme had been chosen, the composition elements came quickly. Over the course of about three hours, my torso was adorned first with an octopus, then some seaweed, a couple of seahorses, and a clown fish hiding in coral – or was it a sea anemone? Finally a deep blue sea enveloped them all. We took photographs.
Outside it was still raining, although the next deluge of significance was my shower back at home. Its water pressure alone was enough to remove all the paints except the richest blue hue of the sea, and one of the greens used for the seaweed. These two needed persistent scrubbing three or four times over to remove the last traces.
The ultimate fate of all body art is to be lost in time… like tears in rain. Sometimes, however, even an ephemeral nature can be surprisingly stubborn.
“You’re very tall and you’re very skinny!”
This news was broken to me by a life artist at The Beehive pub in Tottenham during our half-time break on Thursday evening. Beaming genially over his pint, he recounted the impressive diversity of models that had posed there over recent weeks. Now I was present, giving them another variation of the human form.
It’s why anybody with the right discipline and attitude can be a life model. As I replied to my new friend, “Think what the word ‘model’ brings to mind in our society and you’ll find I don’t tick any of the boxes as an individual; but set me among a broad array of models working at life groups, and I can offer unique challenges for artists.”
An impressive tally of 23 artists had turned up for this session run by Tottenham Art Classes. There was no tuition this evening, so pose times were called by the group’s organiser, Taz. She started me off with three 3-minute standing poses that created a kind of gesture sequence.
It was a muggy summer’s evening. The air hung heavy, thickened by custard sunshine that oozed through our windows. When Taz asked the artists if they would like to have a large floor fan switched on, she was answered with a resounding, “Yes!” For the first time ever, I was more grateful to have a fan in the room than a heater.
My poses continued: 5 minutes standing, 5 minutes kneeling, 10 minutes standing. I endured beads of perspiration itching their way down slowly from my hairline, across my brows and around my face to my body. It’s a form of exquisite torment when one is honour-bound not to move.
A 20-minute seated pose took us up to the break. Artists then decanted to the other bar of the pub while I admired the works they left leaning against their seats. Pencils, oil bars, watercolours and even an iPad had been put to great employment in making art. I thought the iPad work below, produced by Edward Ofosu, was outstanding.
After the break, I resumed with another 10-minute standing pose, and was then given leave to see out the remaining half an hour on my back. As always, I raised a couple of limbs to make it more interesting and three-dimensional. The red and white sheets upon which I reclined gave the artists extra colour and texture to play with.
It had been a warm, satisfying two hour’s work, rewarded with enthusiasm and colour and creativity in art. I left smiling.
Androgyny time. In the exchange of body painting ideas between myself and Amanda of Feel Good Painted, a regular theme of Amanda’s had been to make me feminine. It was not a shock, therefore, when I arrived for our second body painting session and learned that her inspiration for the evening would be geisha.
It wouldn’t be a make-over in traditional geisha style. Rather, Amanda would blend old and new concepts influenced by Japanese culture, as dissected from Google Images. We would build up various elements and discover where it took us. The only certainty was that my resulting appearance would be somewhat less than butch.
We started with the face…
In an effort to conceal my rugged eyebrows, we tried the proven technique of applying Pritt Stick and a white powder foundation. This experiment was less than successful, however, and was swiftly brought to a sticky end. The affixing of fake eyelashes – my first time with such adornment – went better.
On my torso, Amanda started by painting a large wreath of small pink cherry blossom petals. Inside this she originally planned to paint a geisha face, but on completing my make-up decided that one geisha was plenty. Instead she created a pair of windswept cherry trees in full bloom.
Beneath the wreath swam a magnificent red and gold carp. Above it curved a pleasing arch of orchids. We’d had a good laugh putting this together and I was tickled with the results. All that remained was for me to pose for the camera.
And pose I did. Not exactly recognisable as a geisha, but perhaps more like – as one friend correctly observed – an utter tart.
Between two disappointments came great satisfaction. Wednesday’s modelling had been cancelled as the organiser forgot they’d booked me and arranged for somebody else to pose instead. On Monday I’d already travelled an hour and a half when I got a call minutes from the venue, to say all but one artist had dropped out and the session was abandoned. Tough luck in both cases, sweetened with deep sincere apologies.
Tuesday at Candid Arts, however, went ahead and was very gratifying. The 14 artists who turned up were thoughtful about their work and appreciative of the poses. So was our group facilitator, Rowan James, with whom I had not previously had the pleasure of working.
I started with a 10-minute standing pose, then cycled through five 2-minute dynamic poses, before going 5 minutes standing, 10 minutes sitting and 20 minutes standing, up to a break. It was a warm night made even hotter by the studio’s ceiling-mounted heaters, but I was comfortable.
We resumed with a single 45-minute seated pose – a signature pose in which limbs were entwined and locked. I felt I needed a good session this evening, and I got my wish. It was doubly rewarding that the artists felt so positive about their work too.
I’d planned my Sunday in two halves: from 10:30am until 12:30pm I would life model at Wanstead House; afterwards I would take the tube to Piccadilly and go for my annual grumble at the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts.
I provided four poses for the artists of Wanstead: 5 minutes standing, 10 minutes also standing, 45 minutes seated on a chair, and – after a long break for tea and chocolate digestives – 25-30 minutes seated on the floor.
The session was quiet but friendly. Here’s what a couple of artists made of me:
As I sat on the underground bound for central London, I wondered how much better, if at all, would be those works favoured with a hanging at the RA. Well, on balance, this was a good year for the Summer Exhibition.
Previous years have disappointed by and large, and impressed by exception. In 2015, whole rooms were interesting, although in his celebrated rooms of vivid colour, curator Michael Craig-Martin seemed to created striking environments of art without picking very many works of individual merit.
As usual there was far too much mutual admiration between Royal Academicians. Oil works and sculptures were generally mediocre, whereas Room V (prints) and Room X (‘A Humument‘ of Tom Phillips) were filled with exquisite little gems.
Norman Ackroyd RA, Bernard Dunstan RA, Ken Howard RA, Emma Stibbon RA had outstanding works on display, as always. Stibbon in particular, but Dunstan alone provided works that might have come straight from a life drawing group.
The top three works I would have picked to take home, however, were:
- 3 – ‘I just want to be held‘, Deborah Brown, c-type print (£1,000)
- 2 – ‘Sanctum‘, Michael de Bono, oil (£9,200)
- 1 – ‘Noon fishing‘, Mick Moon RA, acrylic on canvas mounted on board (£18,000)
Noon fishing – Mick Moon, RA
It had been a good day for amateurs and professionals alike.
Hot on the heels and wheels of being body painted for the 2015 London Naked Bike Ride, I was back with Feel Good Painted for a lower-key, informal body art session.
For Amanda, it was an opportunity to experiment with ideas, without any pressure to deliver a particular finished design for a customer. For me, it was the chance to learn about the materials, techniques, processes and durations of body painting.
We arranged the session for the Friday immediately after the bike ride, and agreed to work on a composition with a ‘jungle’ theme. This would allow various elements to be doodled together with no fixed end design in mind. We would see where the flow took us over the course of two or three hours.
Amanda began with lilies, then added a snake, followed by a hummingbird and some foliage, and finally a small frog with a big orange hand. Some details she liked, some she didn’t like, but this was the very point – it was about discovery, whilst also being rather relaxing in a therapeutic kind of way.
On this occasion the artwork adorned just my back. At the end we took a few photos before I pulled on a T-shirt and headed home. My shower that night saw me standing in a pool of green rather than the muddy brown that usually seems to follow body art.
It had been another enjoyable experience – certainly one to be repeated.
steve ritter 