Routine work – the naked truth

Mother and baby

This picture nicely shows how an artist managed to draw just what he saw – a mother who knew that the aim was to sit still while being drawn, plus a baby who didn’t.

My working routine as a life model is far from routine. Even within colleges where I have worked for years, the use of life drawing within the syllabus varies with each academic year. Usually, this change seems to be driven by a desire to save money. In a college where I started 7 years ago, in the first year I did 2 or 3 half days a week throughout the year. With students working towards the same qualification, this year I did 4 sessions a week for 2 months, and that was all. I mostly work in colleges of further education, which sit between high schools and universities, bridging the gap for those 16-19 year old students that don’t move directly from one to the other. I have just taken on another assignment with such an establishment, but they have booked me for a block of 5 weeks (half a term) to do 7 sessions a week. They appear to use 1 model per half term like this, so completing a lot of classes per year. I have yet to find whether this is a small number of students getting a lot of experience, or many different students taking fewer classes. I do, however, despite the fact that it means less work for me, like this college’s aim of letting the students work with a variety of models. The other college I have referred to here uses only me, so the students do not even get to draw both genders. That way, I get more work, but the students see quite a lot of just me. This makes for a more relaxed class atmosphere, but may limit their portfolios.

Because of the uneven work loading, I need to watch constantly for new work opportunities. The 5-week assignment appeared this week, and I was glad that the tutor and I agreed that this arrangement would suit both of us. Conversely, another job for which I applied did not come my way. It was quite local, my CV fitted the requirements, and we had a pleasant interview. However, with a young male tutor calling the shots, I suspect that the successful applicant was not a mature man like me.

Term-time routine

I have now settled in to the routine of college work that will be the basis of my weeks from now until the end of the year. The 5 half days form 2 full days and 1 morning, which is good in leaving lots of space for other stuff. The downside is that the 2 full days each involve 2 locations, with a journey over the lunch break to get to the second. I would prefer to be in the same location, not least so that I can get some exercise during the break; particularly with these early sessions, 6 hours of standing still during a day can be quite a trial. However, in this business, there is little enough work to go around, without being choosy.

The long poses are broken by both my requirements to stretch muscles and the students’ need to get some rest. So a typical 3 hour lesson is 15 minutes student preparation, 35 minutes in pose, 5 minutes stretch, 35 minutes in pose, 20 minutes student break, 35 minutes pose, 5 minute break, 35 pose, ending with 10 minutes for clearing up and summing up lessons learned. So, with 4 periods in the pose, I need to have a means of accurately resuming after a break. The tutor helps by putting tape to mark where I touch the floor, and possibly using a pen to indicate where my hands touch my body, or where limbs cross. Students are also asked to check the position against their drawing. Unfortunately, with 20 or so artists in a circle around me, I often get conflicting opinions about the exact position required. Now, we have the technology for students just to photograph the pose for a later check. However, some tutors are wary of students using such photos as a basis for drawings, and some models worry about subsequent use of the photos. I have no such qualms; cameras are now ubiquitous, and I don’t think that many people will want to exchange pictures of me. To help get the body position correct, I carefully check what I can feel and see of my pose. For the head angle, I look carefully at what I can see, and where the binocular image of my nose touches objects in the room. It is important for a model to pick a point on which to focus, and to make this away from students’ faces; many find eye contact unsettling when they are new to the life studio. Unfortunately, it is quite common for someone or something to move into a position that obscures this point.

So, off to watch that impressively steep early learning curve.

New Term

The last 2 months have been quiet in terms of life modelling: what has been termed “the clothed season”. I did a couple of days of summer school in July, doing introductory classes for new students that should be starting at college in September. There were also a few adult education sessions, the last being a full day in August. During that, I met an unusual combination among the students – a mother and daughter. The daughter is a German living in UK, and her mother had come over for a short visit. She spoke little English, so I had a chance to practise my German. It turned out that their home was not far from where I had lived in their country. It was perhaps indicative of our differing cultures that I was able to conduct this mundane conversation without any awkwardness, due to the German acceptance of nudity as a normal feature of life. Though I try my best to make it otherwise, in the UK we still generally find it difficult to get to that stage without some preliminary discussion of what is going on in the life drawing class situation.

Now, with less than a week to go to the start of the new academic year, students are enrolling, timetables are being finalised, and tutors are thinking about booking life models. This usually leads to clashes regarding my availability, but so far I have had an orderly start. I have a confirmed booking for Monday mornings and tentative booking for Monday afternoons. Another college wants 3 sessions (half days) each week, with days to be decided. That should take half of my working week, leaving potential for 5 more sessions of modelling or for my various other small jobs. For instance, next week I have 1 full day acting as a volunteer patient for my local medical school. There is a link between my motivation to help medical training and my desire to remove embarrassment from nudity, which I will explain at some stage.