I love drawing people in their birthday suits, the way they first popped out. Boobs, bums & bouncy bits couldn't be more ideal when my Muji pens are about. I went to my first ever life drawing class when I was 15 year old at a family friend's house. Her name is Joy & she is the most excentric person I know - gray hair tied in 70's style hair scrunchies on the top of her hair, wearing the most bizzare & excletic mix of materials & colours...(saying this I've just realised she may have had some subconscious influence on my current style? Although the hair scrunchy has yet to catch on). She lives in an amazing studio flat which is literally rammed full on sculptures. Her late husband was a sculptor & they fill every possible space in her flat, hanging with cobwebs & blanketed with a layer of dust. The nudey life model precariously posing on a raised wooden block drapped in velvet material, rose from the sculptures as our own living sculpture as we squeezed ourselves between bits of marble & stone to face our easels. A completely mesmorising experience, instantly securing a life long love of drawing the human form. I remember proudly telling my art teacher at school about the class who responding in a less than enthusiastic way - apparently it was 'inappropriate' for someone under the age of 15 to go to a life drawing class. Honestly, I have baths. I know what it looks like.
Most peculiar, but then again, she was a teacher at the same school where make-up & jewelry were forbidden, skirts had to practically touched the ground & speaking to boys was considered a sin. We also meditated every morning, chanted in Sanskrit throughout the day, ate vegetarian food & had cross-stitching lesson. But that, of course, is quite another story.
I really feel very grateful to life drawing. It's wonderful to have something to be so passionate about & to know that it'll make me feel like a chilled out bean whenever I do it. I almost feel like I owe something of myself to the practise & have felt for quite some time now that I should become a life model to say thank you.
I'm naked to say thank you to other people for being naked. I've drawn your bits, now you can draw mine.
We have a tea break half way through the weekly life drawing class I go to & I always enjoy to have a bit of chat with that weeks model in this time. Such a range of types seem to life model, a particular favourite is an 18 year old girl who works full time as a nude model, often posing for photographers (reading between the lines she doesn't mind a bit of eroticism in these circumstance. Eroticism in the name of art, of course). Another fab model is from Slovakia & works as a photographer & make-up artist. She modeled in last weeks class & lo & behold she's now pregnant! Very jolly to draw the little bump I must say. Very jolly indeed. The models I've chatted to have given me advice about getting into life modelling & soon enough I'll be at my first 'Spirited Bodies' event flaunting my bits & bobs infront of anyone who wants to whip out a pen & paper.
The chappy who runs the life class I go to is involved with the Portobello Art Gallery. He helped organise an exhibition of local artists so I submitted some of my little drawings. I popped along to the private view & almost passed out when I spotted he'd priced them at £70 & there was a little red dot. A red dot?! Sold! Almost far too exciting. My first ever exhibited piece was sold. I still can't believe it. Ooh la la.
See, everyone loves a bit of nudity.
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