Sitting completely naked in front of a room of fully clothed people would be for most of us, the stuff of nightmares. But if you’re a life model, being nude and viewed, is exactly what you signed up for. What is the experience like? Britt Coker fleshes out the details.
Jeanie Robertson has been holding life drawing classes in Nelson for three years. She provides art materials, a willing model, some chill tunes, and moments in time. Gathered artists of differing skill levels aren’t interested in sketching a table with a fruit bowl and flowers; here, they want still, human life. During the course of the class, the nude model will adopt several different poses that feel natural to them. Each pose will last from an initial sketch time of five then ten minutes, to a final pose involving a half-hour comfy lie down. And if you, as an artist, get nothing satisfactory on paper in five minutes, then you are doing it right, says Jeanie.
“The reason that we do short poses is to free up your hands and your mind. To kind of get you settled into class, and then we get into the longer poses. There's no teaching as such. It's about people finding their own creative freedom.”
“We have a little break halfway through the class so people can chat and get to know each other. Then at the end of the class, completely optional, people can put out their sketches that they've done. And then you walk around, whether you put your sketches out or not, and have a wee look at everyone's work, to see different kinds of styles. To pick up what you might like to try next time... A lot of people say that they feel really calm and peaceful afterwards.”
In Nelson, Jeanie has found that men prefer drawing the male body and women prefer drawing the female body. She presumes they are going with what they look at in the mirror most often. Something as innocuous as a kneecap, for example, is quite different between the genders. In fact, when it comes to drawing, she says not much is the same. Necks, hands, torso, tops of the feet – you’d recognise one when you saw one, but recreating it on paper requires a little more effort.
Jeanie finds her models through her Facebook page and word of mouth. She says no one has cancelled on her at the last minute, and usually, the models find the classes rewarding. The artists are free with their compliments and gratitude, so it can be quite a body-positive experience. Plus, sometimes you’ll be handed sketches of yourself at the end of the night as a nice memento.
As a life model in Nelson, be prepared to walk in and recognise someone in the room. Worst case, it’s your boss. Best case, they suddenly remember they have something important they need to attend to. But if not, well hey, a body is a body. The challenge in New Zealand society is that we are trained not to look at naked people, so intently staring at one in your first class, or having others staring at yours, might require a system override.
“Where I've been in Europe, there are nude beaches and people at the swimming pools are nude, and people go to saunas, nude. So just being in that frame of mind - whether I'm drawing or whether I'm being a model - that we all have bodies underneath our clothes, and it's natural and just to be relaxed, and just zone out. The models daydream or meditate while they're modelling. Of course, you need to think about what angles you're giving people, whether they're beginner or experienced artists. If you get into tangling your hands or crossing your legs and arms a lot, it can get quite complicated for someone that's starting to draw.”
What’s the idea behind the model being naked anyway? Wearing clothes has been quite fashionable for a while.
“You learn to draw without clothes first because when you know the structure of a body, the muscle, the skeletal structure, and where the folds of the skin are, then when you put clothes on top of them, you can draw all of the folds where the cloth meets the body.”
Jeanie should know. She comes from a creative family where art has been a big part of her life from the get-go. She’s done different art styles, been involved in numerous overseas exhibitions, and spent a decade as a photographer in Wellington before moving to Nelson three years ago. It’s been over 20 years since she went to her first life modelling class.
“I did Classical Studies, so I loved the Greek elements, and that's how I've always looked at it. Like the sculptures as you walk through Europe, and it's just trying to draw one of those. Bodies are just fascinating. I have a fitness background as well, so with that, I think, just the way that the human body works and how everybody's body is different, just really intrigues me.”
As 21st-century folks seek out more creative options to traditional birthday parties and hens’ nights, she has found plenty of private groups keen to sign up for a novel artistic experience. Admittedly, there is more emphasis on music, drinks, and nibbles and less on the creative results, but the end enjoyment is the same.
Hadrian Loubat is one Nelsonian who has learned to stay very, very still. He’s been a life model on more than a dozen occasions now but recalls clearly his first time. It began like so many brave new plans do, at the pub. As he arrived at the table, it prompted one of his friends to say, “Hadrian is French, he’ll do it.” After he found out what he’d just been volunteered for, Hadrian obliged the typecasting by agreeing. He admits to both being French and liking new experiences, but that didn’t mean this one was easy.
“The whole week preceding, I was nervous; I would question myself if I could do it. I didn't know if I could. And then until the last minute before being nude, the pressure would go up and my heart was pumping, and I was very nervous. And then once the first minute was done, I removed my gown and I forgot all about it. I had to kind of, not perform, but be there, professionally.”
Hadrian has found the modelling great for his self-confidence. Like most of us, he has not always loved how he looked, but the initial challenge of having a dozen people gazing intently at his naked body has been a transition from fear of judgement into a greater acceptance of how he looks.
“It's very liberating, it’s crazy. I would never have thought that before, and doing the experience revealed to me a different feeling from the anxiousness before, the adrenaline that comes into it, and then feeling this satisfaction of having done a good job, and it is a very good experience overall.”
“I've got a French nose and so I've had a complex about it for a long time. But they always give me good feedback about it, they like it, that it's nice to draw and then when I see it on the drawing… It's nice to see how people see me from the outside because it's very different from a photograph. Being photogenic is a thing, and I don't think I am, but in a drawing, it’s really what they saw and how they expressed it.”
He once made the mistake of adopting a 25-minute pose with a twist that had his body screaming after three minutes.
“All along I would count the seconds, I couldn't think of anything else but the pain, so I've learned from that, that it is not easy. So, you always have to think of an interesting pose for the artists but also try to play the long game, because you have to hold that pose for this time.”
As well as the art classes, Hadrian has also modelled for several hens’ nights where a pose with a twist is secondary to the women marking the marital celebration with some as-tasteful-as-it’s-ever-going-to-get male nudity.
“It’s always been a bit more light. The girls most of the time have never drawn, or not since back in school, stuff like this. And I guess for them what I like is, it brings a little bit of naughtiness but without being too raunchy. It's always very light and with a good banter and jokes, it's cool. It's very different from a normal class. And I've always had good feedback from them. I have never had a bad experience.”
Like Jeanie, Hadrian comes from a family of artists who are very supportive of his life modelling. His Kiwi friends tease him a bit about it, but he thinks they also secretly admire him for doing it. Certainly, when he suggests they try it too, there is some resistance and a quick changing of the topic, which is a shame, as Hadrian says male life models are more difficult to come by. If it’s because most men don’t think they have the right physique for it, they’d be wrong. There isn’t one.
“I’m far from being perfect. I'm not like the model type that Christian Dior would pick. I think it is very different for artists. What they want is something interesting, something different. Not always the same type of people. Because every time it gives them a new challenge and a new thing and I think if we all would be the same body type, it would be a bit boring.”
Jeanie would like to encourage people who don’t think they can draw to give the pastime a go and to ignore the feedback from those less than supportive. “A lot of people get told when they're a young age that they're not good somewhere along the line, but everyone can be good and it's just like moving our body. Being creative is such a wonderful thing and it shouldn't be frowned upon.”
