Nothing like a day of firsts: first time to Cambridge, first time at a life drawing class, first time naked in Cambridge at a life drawing class. As I boarded the coach from Oxford in the morning, I settled down to think about the various reactions from people upon hearing about my modeling experiment:
‘I’d feel quite vulnerable, that’s something I would rather share just with my partner.’
‘I’m too old fashioned and English. I want to cover-up table legs in case they cause offense.’
‘Good lad.’ (That was from my mother.)
Three hours later I arrived in The Other Place and immediately got lost, just like my first day at Oxford, and the parody was complete when a tourist took my picture. (If only he’d waited an hour…). Eventually I made it to the porter’s lodge at King’s College to meet Susy, who organizes the class, and as we walked across the quad she told me I was their first male model. (The class is all female, mostly students at King’s, and each week a different member poses for the group.) Given the proximity to the start of finals, Susy told me that today the class would be smaller than normal: only about ten girls. I tried to think of the last time I heard ten of anything being considered ‘small’.
As the class started to arrive, we were in the ‘art room’ at King’s, a small, spare studio overlooking the quad, Susy explained the schedule of poses (how many of each duration) and then I went about changing into the bright pink drop cloth – how did they know, my favourite colour. It turned out to be comically voluminous; there is more of a naked woman to cover than a naked man but not this much more. I tried not to trip over its trailing pieces as I made my way to the centre of the room, which was now encircled by ten easels, drawing kit at the ready.
The cloth made a pile at my feet and we went through the first set of four poses, five minutes each.
At first I tried to keep everything as flexed as possible: stomach, chest, arms, but then I remembered my thighs, my back, my bum, and, shoot, did I just move my eyes? Is that OK? Just breathing changes the shape of my stomach and chest; what if someone was drawing those? Less than halfway into the first pose and my attempts to assuage insecurity (vanity?) were completely overwhelmed by being at the centre of a circle of attention. There was just too much on display to worry about anything other than keeping still.
After the opening poses we took a short break. I sat on a chair and chatted to some of the girls about what it was like when they posed. Most were nervous at first but quite comfortable by the end. We spent most of our time talking about various poses, what worked or didn’t, and everyone seemed to have a story about one body part or another falling asleep.
The next sequence was two fifteen minute poses. Emboldened by my reasonable performance in the opening set, the girls were all very encouraging, I literally overreached, with my right arm outstretched, left arm following it across my chest, weight and body tilted back onto my left foot.
After about five minutes my right arm started to shake and when Susy called seven minutes my shoulder was searing. After ten minutes my right arm collapsed, my shoulder feeling like it was going to fall off. This would happen twice more before the pose was finished, and after another short break I sensibly chose, for the next fifteen minute pose, to cross my hands onto opposite shoulders.
After another short break we began the longest pose of the afternoon, thirty minutes, for which the class decided I should kneel down, arms outstretched, forehead on the floor. After almost an hour of standing this seemed like a good choice, my entire body was sore and I was strangely short of breath. It turned out that kneeling only changed the focus of the pain: after thirty minutes, my knees had melted into the floor. It took nearly a minute to stand-up, at which point I was greeted by the following observation as one artist looked over her neighbour’s shoulder:
‘You’ve been reduced to a misshapen baby; or a tortoise.’
Classic.
This comment was actually hilarious, as the girls would explain that in life drawing, artists are less focused on the body qua body, and more focused on describing, with pencil or pen or charcoal or watercolour, the shapes of which the body is comprised. This is part of the reason why I covered myself with the drop cloth in between poses; the quality of the attention changes between model and person. The ability to separate images from conceptions of images – to see ovals and circles, not a hand – is extraordinarily difficult, and sometimes the results are unexpected. (Hence, babies and tortoises.)
Nevertheless, we were all soon reminded of the salacious expectations that people have about anything involving nudity. After the class had finished Susy and a few others from the class took me to dinner in the King’s dining hall, where I noticed at least a half-dozen young men watching our table, eying the drawing pads. (After about two terms of classes, most of the people at King’s know what goes on in the art room on Sunday evenings, but only girls are allowed to participate.)
One precocious lad even came over to say ‘hello’ but little else; he stood there expectantly, as if the girls had missed their cue to show him their work. ‘Every time!’ said Susy, when he finally returned, disappointed, to his table. Somehow I figured he would have been happy to miss this week’s work anyway.
