lifemodel

Pictures of pictures

2009-12-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Hmm, my first attempt at adding photos, not come out the way I'd planned at all.
Anyway, if you read them from the bottom up, you'll get my first ever cloud painting; above this is the 2nd, and then the 6th one I did that day, using fingernails, paper towels and sheer frustration.
The two at the top (which should have been at the bottom) are from my third week of trying, when the sky was actually blue - at least at the start of our session.
The journey continues...
Meanwhile I've also learned how to print pics off my phone using Bluetooth and Boots in-store technology, so I've been working on my 'sketch book' all evening, annotating blurry images of my various ceramic experiments. Only two weeks left in this term and I'll miss the last day - off to New Zealand to visit family over Christmas etc.
I've been too busy, stressed or ill to keep up my weekly reporting, but I'm still loving the course. The printmaking is less enjoyable than the textiles session which it replaced (we've covered screen printing over 2 weeks), but tomorrow I can return to the textiles room and play with whichever technique I'd like to take further (felt-moulding and silk paper sculpture appeal). The tutor promised me oils for my next cloud paintings, and I've been enjoying a book on Turner from the college library, but I may see if I can capture the colours of yesterday's sunrise with oil pastels first.
Ceramics is currently most exciting, with a book on smoke-firing full of the most beautiful images and descriptions of how the results were achieved. I'm still working on making a glaze from raw ingredients too - eggshells, seashells, flints, all ground up and mixed with powdered clay into a slurry, then sieved - at which point I understood how hard it is to grind flint, even after it's been fired. More elbow grease required yet. Hope to post some pics of pots eventually.
I might manage another post before we leave, but if not Season's Greetings to all my Dear Readers, and I'll be back with more in the New Year.

Slippy Vessels

2009-11-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

I wish I managed to write this blog straight after classes rather than wait until the last possible moment (ie the night before the next week's classes). Ah well, that's the joy of the writer's deadline. At least I'm still writing every week, and it's being read by a few friends here and there.
I had an excellent reason for not writing it last weekend: I went straight off from the end of class on Friday to stay on a narrowboat for the weekend. I can even justify it as part of my research for the vessel theme - perhaps. I did take a few photos of a derelict rowing boat on the canal bank, framed by birch trees, tying in nicely with the 'wreck' I'm working on for ceramics AND the tree shapes for my painting. One day I'll be able to add photos to the blog. Promise.
So in painting we were all continuing the objects we'd chosen the week before, and having spent much of Tuesday morning studying my previous efforts while sitting nude for a class of teenagers in the same room, I knew what I wanted to try next. I'd brought in a New Scientist article on fractals in weather-forecasting which had some interesting illustrations to inspire me. The tutor was talking of layering the paint/charcoal mix and allowing it to dry in-between, so I smeared a layer of white emulsion all over two sheets of A1 (using my favourite tool, the paper towel) and allowed them to dry during the coffee break - communal coffee-and-ginger-cake - then set up a donkey in the lobby and experimented with wet and dry charcoal and emulsion mixes on top. One painting had looked quite promising until I ruined it by adding too much, but I learnt something new. The second gave me the cloud layers I'd been aiming for, and a way of suggesting the light coming through. So not a finished product, but getting closer. A fellow-student took snaps of them all with her phone and emailed them to me. I'm now thinking I'll have to buy another sketch book purely for my clouds project.
The afternoon was spent in the print room with our textiles tutor learning the basics of silk-screen printing in pairs. We used wool and string as a resist, and later torn strips of paper, and initially one colour. Our pair used too much of the ink mix and made a mighty fine mess, adding further colours with gay abandon and ending up with a sludgy brown-grey on the last sheets - we also played around with the soggy string and wool, dropping it onto the prints to make worm-marks. That triggered further thoughts for me on the 'Ancient Can of Worms' theme which is still lurking in the background. There's a poem on its way, and probably a sculpture, but it's taking a lot of processing and isn't there yet.
In ceramics I took a two-pronged approach to our Vessels project. One was to scale up my little 'family vessel' maquette, discovering what I couldn't do with larger pieces in the process, and making four little figures to inhabit the broken boat which resembled chess pieces. The other was to finish mixing the casting slip and start playing around with materials to see what happened. The stiff hessian I had did exactly what I was hoping it would - held up in a tubular shape. I have to see how it fired before I know if I can aim for a final piece with it. The paper doily was useless and fell apart as soon as the slip soaked into it. The netting was interesting, some of it plain and some knitted up into a square, likewise the knitted material sample. At the last minute I fetched some fluffy wool that I had in the back of my notebook, and draped it into a loose pile when 'slippy', thinking that it may serve as 'worms' if I go for the can of worms idea. The garlic press squiggles were fine for a small maquette but might not scale up.
There should be a firing this week so I'll see how my various thumb-pots and glaze ingredients have fired. There's still the planned raku-firing of my large coiled pot to attempt too... not enough time. I suspect I'll have to return to ceramics when we get to choose next year.
Finishing off with life drawing as usual, and we had a female model for the first time. We've met before and spent some time chatting and exchanging news of other jobs. She's lovely to draw - 'just draw lots of curves,' she told us 'and you can't go wrong.' Our initial task was to use sharply defined black and white, deciding where on the body to draw 'contour lines' of tone and filling in all the darker bits black. I definitely haven't got the hang of tone yet. The last drawing of the day was the technique I've seen used to great effect with students I've sat for - to cover the whole sheet with charcoal and to rub out the lighted areas of the model with a putty rubber. It's a very messy business. And I'm not magically better at producing accurate or interesting pictures even when no pencil is involved.
Still resisting drawing practice, though I did a little on the boat. It's much easier to read a book about drawing than it is to actually do it. But the ideas are swarming around and slowly finding their way out into the world, either in 3D or in poems, so I'm not complaining at all.

Exciting Adventures

2009-11-17T02:15:00.000-08:00

What an exciting week. Painting clouds, making casting slip, a six-course gourmet lunch...
On Thursday morning we were given our sheets of 20 drawings of objects from the week before, and had to choose one to make into a painting. I'd been thinking about this during the week and decided to do the stool floating in mid-air with clouds as the background. When it came to actually painting though, the clouds took over. They needed the whole sheet of paper, and somehow they wanted a couple of silver birches at the bottom, not a stool plastered over the top. I wasn't satisfied with my first attempt and went straight onto another, this time using a lighter background and darker clouds, and wet compressed charcoal for the trees - the first had been black paint applied with a stick.
At break time the tutor suggested I went outdoors to paint, responding to the sky as it was instead of an image of some clouds captured last week. Also I could apply the paint faster with screwed-up paper towels... I ended up out in the lobby where I had a clear view of both the rapidly-moving clouds and the original birch trees. I spent a blissful hour producing four further paintings, trying different approaches each time and making a glorious mess, singing to myself and feeling absolutely great. The tutor came up at the end of the session. 'Are you happy with these?' he asked. No. No, not happy with the results at all, I feel like I'm only beginning, that I could paint clouds for weeks and still not get them - but the process is fabulous!
At lunchtime one of our number was observed eating in the restaurant area of the students canteen, so we quizzed him when he'd finished. 'Oh, the duck was great,' he replied. 'Three courses for four quid.' A group of us marched over and booked a table for the next day, which we discovered was for a six-course gourmet lunch. Six quid, with extra discount because we were students. We pledged to eat nothing all morning, and headed off to textiles.
Of course we'd all forgotten we were meant to bring in a photocopied image for the printing technique we were to learn, apart from one chap who'd brought in a whole folder of photographs, so he was mobbed in the Learning Centre as we tried to second-guess what we were supposed to do with them, and find a working photocopier. There was only one in the whole college so we trooped over en masse and copied assorted images of trees and buildings.
And so onto Transfer Printing, where we drew or painted onto the photocopies with Dysperse dyes, learnt about overlaying images and painting plain backgrounds, operated the big hot press and printed onto a variety of materials - man-made fibres take the image better than natural ones, and the photocopies themselves can also transfer a pale image... worth noting. Might try this at home, folks.
In Friday's ceramics class we were meant to be starting our project, those of us who'd finished our first coiled pot at least. People are at various different stages depending on whether they'd missed any weeks, and how fast they work. Sketchbooks were an issue, the course leader hadn't provided any and it was finally established that we had to buy our own - I already had done, after the first week when I was so fired up about vessels, and I've been adding to it weekly. Gold star for me.
I enquired about slips and soaking materials in it then firing away the material, as he'd mentioned the week before. Been thinking about the possibilities all week. I also took in some other materials to fire for glazes - seashells and flints, to add to my powdered fired eggshells. I spent most of the session mixing a casting slip with a big noisy mixer, and we all saw what a difference occurred when the de-flocculation fluid was added (it removes fixotropy, in case you wondered). In-between adding small lumps of white stoneware clay to the mix I played around with coiling another small raku pot. I wanted to try cutting holes into it, after making one with coiled holes at home. Strangely, when I came to applying the knife, it was savage - gouging out holes and slits from the inside of my poor little pot. It was definitely called 'Attacked from Within', and has been joined by a few maqettes made at home last night called 'Inside, Outside', 'Ancient Can of Worms', and 'Family Vessel'. This is touching some deep wounds.
And so on to lunch. Ah, what can I say? Such fun - none of us being used to eating out posh, too much delicious food to handle, good banter over the table, desserts in plastic take-away dishes because we were already late for the next session - we'll be back for more! Six of us crept into the life class late, giggling and feeling like naughty kids who'd just had an adventure.
Our normal tutor was missing for Life Drawing, and so was the model, so we had to draw the supervising tutor and each other, applying techniques we'd already learned, plus working with tone. I don't know how to do tone. But I'm learning. My proportions are already improving. More more more - keep at it. The journey is just beginning.

Reading plus Doing equals Learning?

2009-11-10T05:49:00.000-08:00

Back after half term, and we started with a rather disappointing session in the Learning Centre. The staff dude who was taking us didn't seem to have much of a clue as to what we were studying or why we had to be there - the big screen presentation was geared towards finding info on Great Artists for essay-writing, which we don't have to do, and all the mouse moves and clicks were way too fast for most of us tech-shy Oldies. A whole suite of computer terminals was reserved for us upstairs and the (by now two) staff dudes were run off their feet trying to log us into the system - largely unsuccessfully I'm afraid. Some managed to get into Moodle but fell at the last hurdle - yet another password needed to access the Textiles notes we've been trying to reach since week one...
Fortunately for me, I am Known to the staff (as having unsuccessfully attempted this exercise every week) and eventually I was logged in (illegally - ssh don't tell anyone) on a staff dude's log-in and FINALLY managed to print off several pages of class notes on batik, felt making, soldering and silk paper making, to the envy of my classmates who noticed. Most of them gave up and wandered off for a coffee break.
As if to make up for this, our painting tutor gave us a nice easy task for the rest of the morning - not. One large sheet of paper (A1 I think), a variety of drawing implements, and the instructions to go off and draw 20 things in the next hour. Quick mental calculation - 3 minutes per item? That can't be right!
After exhausting the easier items in the classroom and some distant trees, I went out into the corridor, where a huddle of my fellow students were observing a caretaker's floor brush. I joined them. Further on there were people drawing a snack machine, the lift doors and assorted bins and notices. I had a go at the stairwell, sadly. In desperation, I found myself outside taking a rubbing of two grids with interesting patterns... still only fourteen things drawn and I was exhausted, nearly in tears with frustration and about to give up. But back in the classroom (I'm not a quitter) and finally doing a reasonably accurate rendition of a stool, I found I'd managed my 20 things, unlike many of my artistically-able friends, and could go off to lunch with a clear conscience. My grid-rubbing was even singled out for praise.
In textiles that afternoon we were given the password - again - and settled down to some applique work. I have to say applique has come a long way since I was given a book on it in the early 70s. Now you can paint onto 'bondaweb' and iron it onto various fabric squares, giving a coloured background that glues items to itself with further ironing (don't forget the parchment paper on top though, or you'll be cleaning the iron for the rest of the session). Then you can sew random patterns into the result with machine embroidery - or even take a needle and coloured embroidery thread and do it the slow way. That's what I did. I used to love embroidering before I had children. After of course I never had the time...
Ceramics on Friday mornings is always a good session. We were finishing off our large coiled pots - mine ended up with some curly decoration round an ovoid lip, others cut amazing patterns into theirs and one lad drew manga cartoons round the belly. I also had a go at burnishing with the back of a spoon, over the parts that were dry-enough-but-not-too-dry (is that 'cheese-hard' or 'leather-hard'? I forget). I was warned that those parts now won't take a glaze. The tutor gave me the results of my eggshell-firing - a white powdery residue which I pestled ready to mix with slip to make a glaze - and suggested bringing in some flint next time. I showed him my thumb-pots made at home and talked about my fascination with holes, suggesting fragility in strength, and he told me that lace can be immersed in slip and fired... I've been thinking about this in relation to my project all week.
The life model was a bit late in the afternoon so we started off drawing our tutor - clothed, I'm afraid - using charcoal. When the model arrived we did three drawings, but what we were supposed to concentrate on I've already forgotten - some shading came into the third one I think, trying to add tone to make him look 3D. I do remember that my proportions were out, and I wrote on the drawings where I'd gone wrong. There was a particular technique we were using, I'm sure. One of my dear poetical friends said 'Ah, that's what we call spagghetti-brain. Menopausal. It's quite normal.'
OK. Glad I'm normal, for once.
And we had homework this week. Draw more items. Get sketchbooks up to date. Done. I've also borrowed two books on drawing, and two art magazines. It's always easier to read about something than to actually do it, and I can kid myself it's 'necessary research'. Well, it is.

Improving!

2009-10-23T02:46:00.000-07:00

We walked in on Thursday morning to find a bicycle set up with a backdrop of velvet curtains and sidelit by a pair of spotlights. Yikes! We have to paint that?
Yes. With ink, water, brush and stick, and white conteh. Working with tone again.
I sat and thought about it. Decided to focus on the velvet, how the light fell, where the folds were. Then I used a stick to roughly sketch a bike on top. Some bits worked ok, some bits didn't, so I started another. And a third. At the end of the session I was reasonably satisfied that I'd captured something and learned something. My paintings were praised by the tutor and a couple of the students. Wow.
Onto textiles and two techniques to cover in this class - silk paper and soldering. Soldering? Really? Yes, we get to fuse man-made fabric using a soldering iron. I was in the silk paper group first and really enjoyed the process, full of ideas as to how I could use it for my vessel project - embed words cut out of newspapers, mold it to a shape... We all felt rushed when we swapped tables, there was grumbling in the ranks about not enough time or resources (2 soldering irons and 2 sewing machines between us), but I mastered my wobbly moments when sat in front of the sewing machine making everything go wrong - old traumas from Secondary school days which have prevented me from sewing anything at all except by hand ever since.
Friday was the wonderful relaxation of ceramics again, further pot coiling, we had to make them big, with in and out bits, and when they've been biscuit-fired we'll have to smash them (in a controlled manner), decorate them, fire them again then glue them back together. Interesting. I've been playing with the clay I brought home, making a range of thumb-pots and engaging with my daughter across the kitchen table. She made a volcano model to take into school with bicarb of soda and vinegar...
And a new technique in life drawing, focusing on the curves, drawing a series of ovals from big to small, to end up with something like a Michelin man. I wasn't too good at that bit, but overall I think I'm improving at judging angles and relative sizes.
It all feels good. And I'm gutted that we have no classes this week or next, Inset days followed by half term. I was just starting to get the hang of things.

New Friends

2009-10-12T03:01:00.001-07:00

Week three, and we're getting to know each other.
We're a very mixed bunch, ranging in age from 16 to retired, and in ability from very good to - well, me. We're from all different regions of the UK, assorted backgrounds and educational experience, but what we do seem to have in common is a desire to be friendly and supportive to each other. Excellent. I was delighted to discover that our latest recruit lives in my town so we can share travel costs. He's only been here a week - moving was one of the reasons he joined late - so I'm really interested to hear his impressions as a newcomer. So far so good.
Our painting tutor obviously decided that the cardboard coffee cup was not challenging enough last week, so we walked in on Thursday morning to find a large and complicated willow sculpture as our latest inspiration - we had to respond with tone. Aagh! But it's full of lines! We had a range of media to play with, all monochrome - pencils, willow and compressed charcoal, white chalk, conte and emulsion, and I suppose I learned something from my mistakes. It was a relief to head upstairs for the textiles in the afternoon though.
Felting techniques with a range of brightly-coloured dyed fleeces placed onto net and rolled in bubble-wrap. Great stuff. My first attempt was a coracle design with black and Jacobs wool on a white layered with green background. By the time it had shrunk and distorted it wasn't exactly recognisable, but it was another attempt to interpret 'vessel' to go in the sketchbook. I just had time to make a random colourful piece on black muslin before hometime.
The next morning it was straight back into coiling our pots in the ceramics session. Mine had gone too hard during the week and I was shown how to re-wet it, carefully, oops no it's broken... then I was shown how to rescue a broken pot, and by the end of the session I was being praised for having a good shape and thinness. The pot, not me. One of the ladies unveiled a shoe she'd fashioned from the clay we could take home, fittingly transported in a shoe box, and we all admired her skill. I thought of my clumsy and crumbling attempts at coracle maquettes and determined to try again. Eggshells, now - there's a thought. Vessels. Hmm. What happens to ground-up eggshell in a kiln? Can it be mixed with clay? I asked the tutor. 'Bring some in,' he said, 'and we'll try it.' I suspect he already knows and isn't telling, I have to experiment with it myself.
Friday afternoon and poor Alan, our model, was allowed to sit for our lifedrawing attempts this time. First a full-length figure to re-cap last week's measuring work, then a portrait study. I could see that I'd already improved. I had two legs and feet I was reasonably pleased with this time. My portrait was going OK, I thought (it looked like someone, if not Alan) until the tutor came round and showed me where the points of reference should have been. I have great trouble with the 3D-effect technique, drawing boxes for the jawline and forehead, planes and angles. In my practice this week I've been attempting to draw eggshells and a seashell, as well as another effort with the acorn and seedpods. I've no idea where to put shading to make it look 3D.
Lots to learn. Still enjoying the process, that's what matters. I have to say I like the textiles and ceramics work more at the moment though.

Homework

2009-10-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

I've been doing homework. Some of it easy, the stuff that comes naturally to me, and some of it not.
The easy stuff consists in reading art magazines from the LRC - this week back copies of a-n magazine and Ceramic Review. Also starting a 'sketchbook' and sticking photocopies of interesting things in it, along with thoughts and ideas and quotes and poetry. Sketches? Well ok, a couple.
The harder stuff was drawing practice and clay modeling. I don't draw. I don't even doodle, and haven't since I was a teenager. That's why I'm doing this course, really. I want to learn how to draw. Which means I have to actually DO IT rather than just read about it and watch other people...
Last Thursday's painting class was two hours of drawing/painting a disposable cardboard coffee cup. After my first attempt (a page of A1) in which I spent a lot of time putting in the background to my cup, badly, the tutor suggested simply drawing lots of coffee cups on the next page. Eventually I got something that seemed to have a resemblance to an empty cup. Then I was allowed to do another large 'painting' one.
The afternoon textiles session was postponed as that tutor was busy elsewhere - a shame as I'd been really looking forward to felting - so instead we had an introduction to print-making, monoprints on scraps of paper, paper towels, pieces of newsprint etc. We could use the morning's coffee cups as inspiration if we wanted, or simply scribble or draw whatever we wanted on the back of our paper and see what of the ink it picked up. I've watched the process many times but never tried it myself before now. My results weren't amazing. I suspect it takes a lot of time and practice.
Friday morning was ceramics again, back to coiling our pots, plus an old video of Ladi Kwali (name? Nigerian potter) which was most inspiring. We were given an 'assignment sheet' for the term with 3 options, but some of us had already decided to work out our own assignment. I showed the tutor my sketch-book-in-progress and explained the sort of idea I was reaching towards (I don't think he'd ever seen so much poetry in a sketch-book) and he was pleased - with my enthusiasm at least. So my modeling-in-clay homework has been a couple of attempts (maquettes) at making a coracle shape in clay. It's really not easy. Not for a total beginner, anyway.
And on Friday afternoon our life drawing session was with the other tutor, who had firm ideas as to how we should proceed. With careful measurement and plumb lines. It took ages - two drawings only in the whole session. I managed to get a foot and half a leg I was mildly pleased with, but the rest was way out. Now I know why half the participants apologise to me when I'm sitting as a model. I was surprised at how long legs are, and how big feet are, but pleased at least that I'd made some sort of progress.
We are supposed to practice drawing people, all the time, but I've decided to stick with easier objects for now. A small rounded bowl. Two mobile phones. A half-bottle of brandy, from various angles. And today, a couple of acorns, some curly oak galls and ripe seed pods filled with orange balls.
I'm nowhere near up to GCSE standard yet.

Beginnings

2009-09-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ah, no modelling work today (postponed for two weeks) so I spent many happy hours visiting exhibitions in local studios as part of Somerset Arts Weeks. Most inspiring.
I am so happy that I decided to 'go for it' and spend 2 years studying and practicing art, despite the perceived need to earn a living and put my previous 2-year course to good use... more bohemian poverty and a total change of direction, but one which is making my inner child intensely happy.
Last Thursday was our first day. We were told we wouldn't be doing any actual 'work' but like most communications from the college that turned out to be wrong. By the mid-morning break we were stood in front of easels and issued with compressed charcoal, brushes and pots of water and of white emulsion and invited to draw/paint a collection of apples on the tables between us. Our theme for the term was to be 'vessels', the apples were suggested as 'vessels' for seeds.
OK. Blank paper. Charcoal. Ignore all those inner messages saying 'you can't draw!' and just do it. The process is all, the product is irrelevant. So I observed where they were in relation to each other, and began making marks. The tutor remarked at some point that my apples were smaller than most people's (but that's how I saw them). Suddenly the session was at an end and we looked at what everyone else had done. Yes, mine were small. But I'd filled in the space around them and indicated the lines on the paper they lay on. I wasn't too displeased for a first attempt.
After lunch we headed upstairs for Textiles. We were straight into Batik work, containers of hot wax and interesting implements for applying it to paper, plus dyes to spread over the top and irons and newspaper to remove it after. We were a big group and it was all rather chaotic, I felt quite pushy trying to get my turn on the iron and straight into making the next sheet, but by the time she stopped us I had 4 pieces of coloured patterned paper.
OK, next part of the process was to tear up our sheets and use them to make a collage, with the morning's painting of apples as a guide... again, I was looking at pattern, how they lay in relation to each other. I liked the end product and thoroughly enjoyed the process too.
Driving home I realised that I had a manic grin all over my face. Wow - 2 years of total self-indulgence playing around like a child...
Friday was harder. First thing was ceramics, and after the initial obligatory health and safety rules and general introduction, we were each given a lump of clay and asked to make a thumb pot in the shape of a long thin cylinder. Have you ever tried it? A couple of people got the knack straight away, but most of us were struggling with the way it just kept widening out, no matter what we did. Several attempts and a coffee-break later, I finally got the idea of moulding it from within while firmly constricting the outside. Next project was another thumb pot which would be broken up and glued back together at a later session, but we all ran out of time and had to leave our half-moulded shapes on a shelf covered in cling-film.
Friday afternoon is going to be the hardest part of this term. Life drawing. You'd think after all the modelling I've done and all the tutors I've listened to, I would have a head start? All this stuff in my head - how to measure, how many heads fit into the body, etc... I completed 3 drawings in the two hour session, willow charcoal on A1 sheets, and it was SO frustrating I was almost in tears several times.
Oh well, I can only improve. And sitting for the Tuesday morning class of 16 year-olds this week was a boost to my self-esteem... I think I did better than most of them, at least.
Meanwhile my mind has been filled with the concept of Vessels, poetically, linguistically, emotionally, searching through Art journals to see what others have made of it and starting my sketchbook with words and images. Probably more words than images, more words than most student's sketch books, but hey. I'm still a poet underneath. All creative disciplines feed into each other. It's all self-expression.
Yay!

Excited

2009-09-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

My course starts tomorrow.
Here's a quote from the Guardian and Observer guide to Drawing, given away free with the newspaper this weekend and sent to me by a friend from choir (the choir I won't be able to attend for the next year as I'm doing the course):
'In some ways we see the world around us through our language, and our ability to describe it is limited by our understanding of language. The same can be said of visual (drawing) language. Having the right language - selecting the right materials, point of view, making the right marks in response to what is seen, and learning how to organise and structure a drawing to provide the best possible outcome - is an ongoing and continuous process of achievement that develops with every drawing we make.'
I am a poet. This resonates. I am a poet because I cannot draw. I'm aiming to become a poet who draws. I will speak multiple languages. I will speak in tongues.
No expectations, then...

Chaos at College!

2009-09-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my second attempt to enrol and pay for the Art Foundation course. The first was on June 9th, when I handed in the completed form and my documentary evidence for the concessionary rate, but was told I couldn't pay until the Course Manager had contacted me.
I spent the summer waiting. In fact I was so concerned that I phoned the Art Department on several occasions to ask if the course was still running and whether I had a place on it, but no tutors were ever available to ask. Finally, last week, I had the long-awaited phone call - the Course Manager is also my Line Manager for the life model work, so after the shock of discovering that the attendance days had changed (see last post) we started to book me up for modelling. He still seemed a bit unsure about numbers and enrolment so said he'd phone me back on Monday to confirm.
I waited in all day, twiddling thumbs and unable to get down to most of the other things on my To Do list because they depended on knowing about the course... finally at 5.00pm, when I'd given up, he phoned and things began to move.
I said I'd come in and pay the next day.
Arriving at Reception it soon became apparent that the Right hand was in total ignorance of the Left hand's movements. The Receptionist was trying to field enrolments between her Receiving work and was quite obviously stressed. She found my paperwork - but I still couldn't enrol. I needed the Course Manager's signature on a seperate form to say he'd explained everything to me. She phoned through. He came over from the Art Department. Again. It was his third trip that day to sign papers. He thought he'd signed up to teach Art. He hadn't even wanted to be Course Manager in the first place - it was a 'poisoned chalice'. I commiserated. He signed. I waited my turn for the harassed Receptionist's attention again, and finally managed to pay.
Then, having driven all that way, I thought I'd use the college gym to save myself the session fee at my local one - I'm trying to get back into shape after a rather lazy year. At the Fitness Centre there were people waiting for the Receptionist...
I went to get changed. There was still no sign of him. Finally I recognised him taking a large group of new students on a tour round the facilities. When he got back to his post I asked for a locker key so I could use the gym. He looked flustered and decided to deal with the next person in the queue instead. I continued to wait patiently. It's a bad habit of mine.
'Locker key?' he said eventually. 'Follow me.'
We went to the gym, where he hunted on a high windowsill at the end, past the weight training area, and came back with a bunch of keys. The first he tried opened a locker full of someone's equipment. The next one was empty. 'Ah,' I said, 'so I come and see you when I want to get my stuff back...'
The gym was full of young men showing off, graced by the occasional short visit of sporty young women. The music was loud. Some of the cardio-vascular machines weren't working. The Receptionist noticed me struggling with a rower and came to apologise. 'We're getting it serviced next week,' he explained, 'and we're getting some new machines in too. It's hard getting things past the budget.'
I left through a lobby crammed with new students milling around in a state of confusion and high expectations. It's going to be interesting, being both a new but mature student, and a (decidedly mature) life model.

Back Again, with a New Hat

2009-09-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

A new hat being a new role, in this case. I'm taking the plunge - about to experience life on the other side of the easel. Scary stuff, especially as my artistic training and practice ended at the age of 13 when I was told not to take Art O-level. So I'm expecting to go into this at the bottom of the class, which is not comfortable for anyone.
But I'm very excited about learning a new 'language', a new way to express myself. I used to say I'm a poet and a writer because I can't draw. Yet one thing I've discovered in my observations as a life model over the years is that it's possible to LEARN to draw - it's not innate any more than the ability to play a musical instrument.
Let me explain the plan. I'm about to start a part-time Art Foundation Diploma at the college where I work as a model, two days a week studying and probably one day a week working there. As it's so new, so scary, and will doubtless be so emotional at times, I'm going to record my progress in this blog. Who knows, I might even learn how to download photos onto my laptop and transfer them to the blog too. In fact it's something I'll have to learn if my Grants for the Arts project goes ahead, but more on that another time.
In any good story there's the Call to Adventure, which I've heeded, and then there's the Threshold Guardian (or does that bit come later?) anyway, the first Trial. And in this case it's the college Art Dept not managing to communicate effectively... hmm sounds familiar, I had this problem with them last year over the contracts.
In the prospectus the course was due to run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have just discovered that at the end of last term they changed it to Thursdays and Fridays for the first year course (2nd year remains as it was). The lead tutor took all the paperwork home with him but was told that the college would contact the students. Obviously they didn't, and what's particularly frustrating is that I spent several phone calls over the summer trying to get hold of someone to tell me what was going on, but was always told the tutors were away and I'd be contacted soon.
I'm just relieved that I didn't set up a poetry course to run this Autumn. As it is, I have to cancel two jobs I'd agreed to do on Thursday mornings - and take a year's sabbatical from the community choir I've been in for nearly 18 years, as they rehearse on Thursday afternoons. So I suppose it really is a test of my commitment.
Now I just have to wait for confirmation early next week that there are enough enrolled for the course to run...

Back to work

2009-01-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! Mine is...
Yes, dear reader, there's a lovely new man in my life, and all's going well with my family and my life in general - nothing to complain about and a lot of reasons to be happy. So, back to school and college and back to work for me. I had four different jobs last week, and two of them were new groups and new venues.
The first was on Wednesday evening, 8-9.30pm, which was not an ideal time in terms of my twelve-year old, especially as her brother was hardly home all week (he's involved in a local protest/occupation, and a new relationship). It was also very cold. I set off early in case of getting lost, but the directions were clear and I arrived at her studio (a converted shed in the garden) before any of the artists. She's a sculptor mainly, was given my number by another sculptor who I worked for last year, and it's a small group of artists who've met twice before with a male model.
Only three others out of a possible six turned up - I don't know how they managed to fit seven of them plus model into the space available, it felt crowded with four. And cold. I stood or sat over the heater the whole time. They asked if they could book me for their next session, but I had to say no - occasionally would be Ok, but not too often, for my daughter's sake.
Friday I had two jobs, a village hall group with several artists I already knew, then after wandering around the town for the best part of an hour I drove straight over to the catholic school, where they had a new class of lower Sixth to induct into the delights of the naked female form. A mixed group - seemed to be three girls and three boys, but another three boys arrived late and were sent away until the break. The experienced tutor was still working out the lesson plan, and was handing over to a novice tutor after the first fifteen minutes.
The class did not go according to plan, and there was a 'disruptive element' in the form of a gangly lad with a quiff, who objected to lots of short poses to begin (he wanted a long one), lounged around not following what was being taught, and generally had a bit of an attitude. The break went on too long, the three girls left the room and were late back, and two of the planned poses had to be dropped. But for some reason I was paid an extra fiver, so no complaints from me.
I must comment on the sheer beauty of the day on Friday too - a hoar frost round here, bright winter sunshine, loved the sunrise and all the colours of dawn, loved driving to the first job, discovering the riverside at lunchtime, and driving to the second job - except that the fog started when I got up into the hills. Coming home after I emerged from fog to find the orange setting sun bisected by thin cloud - so artistic.
This morning was another new group, in another artist's studio in a village, and the frost was thick and white but not covering the trees so noticeably. I set off early and stuck to the main road as much as possible - the route that took me along a lane bounded by hedges rather than one bounded by ditches, I know what I'd prefer if the car started to slide...
Anyway, arrived safely and early and introduced myself to the hostess artist, who is new to the area and had extensively renovated her house (two of the others came from the same village and spent some time admiring what she'd done to it, and the new spacious studio). There then followed at least fifteen minutes of trying to get easels set up and everyone ready. One artist who I've met before covered the lovely new studio floor in layers of newspaper, as she works with inks. There was a watercolourist, a returnee to life drawing, and two from another class I'd sat for - six in all. I really enjoyed working for them, they really enjoyed me as a model - and again, I was slipped an extra fiver (for staying on to cover the setting up time, and for sitting so still and producing lots of interesting poses, I think). Nice and warm, good views of frosty willows, experienced and appreciative artists, and real coffee - the best sort of job. I'm booked for another five Saturday mornings with them.
Next week I start back at the college, and hope to find out how I can use the gym there - a perk I read about in my 'terms and conditions of employment'. That'll make the short Friday morning sessions worthwhile and fill in the time before the catholic school booking - and save me money on the local gym too.

Under Contract...

2008-12-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

OK, I did sign the new contract which arrived through the post on Friday.
I'd had a phone message from the college telling me about the pay rise, a direct result of my letter, and saying that a new contract was on its way, with the hope that I would reconsider my position. It was from a woman - the name was unfamiliar, so I thought it might be the Art Department secretary. But when I went in to work on Friday the tutor wrinkled his face - 'name sounds familiar, not someone from our office though. Think she's from Finance?'
Oh. So still no recognition from the Art Department itself. The tutor seemed very happy that I was returning next term, and understood that a two-hour session was hardly worth my while, what with the travelling time and the petrol. He said he'd confer with another tutor to see if they could give me more hours together.
The work that session was dynamic - they had to draw a series of movements. The first was from curled up on the mattress to outstretched, still kneeling. It did get a bit repetitive after ten minutes, and my calves were starting to ache, strangely. The next was standing - a twist on one side, around the front with one arm going over my head to a twist on the other side. And the third series was walking towards a chair, sitting down, and getting up again facing another direction. Slowly, with pauses.
On returning home I phoned the number I'd been given. It was for the Head of Human Resources (there's a poem in that job title, I'm sure), so I asked her a few relevant questions, like when might I actually be paid, how much it would be per month, and was the Local Government Pension Plan transferable between jobs...
I also complained a bit about the lack of communication from the Art Department, and how I had no idea who my line manager was, if I was indeed supposed to have one. Maybe that will filter back through the system.
I've never had a contract before. I've certainly never paid into a pension plan. I'm wondering what's happening to me. Is this part of becoming a Real Adult? Of Taking Responsibility For My Financial Future?
Meanwhile my oldest daughter phoned to tell me about her latest likely promotion - from part-time manager in January to full-time manager two months later. On 34k a year. And she's 23.
I invested in my children, not in banks. And now I'm trying to follow in my daughter's footsteps, slowly, and many miles behind. In my own inimitable bohemian fashion, of course...

Work is Cancelled Today

2008-12-02T02:55:00.000-08:00

Hey great news! Work today is cancelled...
I was supposed to be doing six hours for Adult Learning and Leisure in a town about an hour away, leaving at 9am to get back around 5pm, and out again to teach the last session of my poetry course soon after 6pm - this is after being out from 11am-10pm yesterday. So I was relieved to take a call on my mobile yesterday lunchtime from the tutor, apologising for the late cancellation due to outbreaks of flu among participants.
All I need now is a call from the college begging me to stay at the higher rate - or a cheque from them for 60 hours at the higher rate, and thanks for my sterling efforts... or snow...
Everywhere else in England gets snow. We have more grey rain.
I spoke to one of the other models for the college last Thursday evening and he told me the rate had gone up to something over £9/hour. I went in to work the next morning and the tutor told me that was a direct result of my letter. But no-one's bothered to contact me yet, despite a request via the secretary for the Head of Art to phone me that afternoon. I'm still debating as to whether it's best for me to contact them and find out what's going on, but on a point of principle I'm not going to. Yes, dear Reader, I can be a stubborn cow when I'm in the mood.
The private school work ended last Thursday morning and I was paid for the month. Most of it went on paying the mobile mechanic for rescuing me with a new battery when the car wouldn't start last week, and on paying for my portion of the videoing we've done for our poetry set (to be on youtube or googlevideo soonish). The remainder I blew on some early (for me) xmas shopping.
I do have a booking for another private school next term - Friday afternoons at the very friendly Catholic boarding school. £20 per session cash in hand, personal contact and thanks.
I'm aware that I have to start cutting down on the amount of modelling I do, and increasing the amount of creative, academic and 'professional' work. Adjusting the balance. So I'm still not sure if I want to go back to the college. But I DO want to be paid for the work I've already done at the higher rate, of course!
Meanwhile hoping to hear of success in poetry and short story comps, and needing to send off more submissions. And write my essay, and think about my 'placement' for next year, etc.
OK, work's not really cancelled. I'm just doing different work, that's all.

Stuff the job!

2008-11-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

Well, dear reader, I resigned.
Or rather, I decided not to sign the contract they finally managed to send me from the college. Same thing really.
You may remember we've been waiting all term for our shiny new contracts with a number of hours to be filled during the academic year, and a monthly salary, and - we were led to believe - an hourly pay rise. For the last few years I've been working there the tutors have actually told us to claim for more hours than we're doing, because the pay is so abysmal. That was one of the major reasons for sorting it all out and going on contract instead of monthly claim forms. At least I thought it was.
I got home from a full day yesterday to find a large envelope from the college. It contained yet another police Disclosure form to fill in, a pair of forms relating to the pension scheme and how to opt out of it, and two copies of our contract to be signed. I would be expected to do 105 hours over the year (I've already done 60 of those this term) - at exactly the same rate as before, £7.34 an hour.
I was dismayed.
I considered how much I have paid out in petrol already this term - £4-5 per round trip depending on pump price, often twice a week. I revisited the work I've turned down at £10/hr, and even £12/hr, because I have been prioritising this one as my 'main job'. I wondered whether it was appropriate to feel angry and let down, rehearsing arguments until 2am. Even Adult Learning and Leisure pay over £8/hr, PLUS travel costs, and they're considered stingy...
And I crawled out of bed this morning, showered, left at 8.20 am to get there by 9am for an hour and a half session, thinking 'I'll be home by 11.15 if I'm lucky, charge them for 2 hours, that's still under £15, petrol costs of £4 - is this worth it? I think not.'
Went to see the Head of Department straight from work. He's not in until the afternoon. So wrote him a letter and left it with all their forms returned. I said I'd honour the bookings already made unless they can find anyone else to cover them - I like to be professional even if it's against my interests - but will not be signing the contract or returning next term.
So there.
It's hard work valuing myself, but I'm getting there, gradually.
I was in tears on the way home.

Ah, more relaxed thank you...

2008-11-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

...due to a (free) shiatsu session lasting over an hour, from a friend who's in training and needs people to practice on. She comes to my poetry course on Tuesdays.
This week was more manageable, but I still had to lie down for a long time yesterday, after four hours working at the private school, two hours choir and another two hours in town catching up with an old friend and going to the preview of an Art exhibition. It reminded me of how Chronic Fatigue felt, and I don't want to go there again.
I did have to go in for periods 1&2 this morning, but I've found a friend (from choir) who should be able to do Friday mornings for them now. I'll be back working at the college from next week anyway.
The first double period on a Thursday morning is with a different tutor, teaching BTech Art rather than A level. She's enthusiastic, friendly, dynamic and inspiring, and had them drawing lots of quick poses and even a moving series (I was walking around the big table, slowly) right from the start. The second week was a 'measuring' intensive with longer poses, and all the students said Thank You to me again at the end. The main tutor (Head of Art) always refers to me as 'the model', not by name, and talks about 'the hips, the breasts' etc. I feel dehumanised, somehow, and it's hard to connect with the students in his classes. Maybe that's the idea. Can't have impressionable young things from moneyed backgrounds fraternising with the model now, can we?
Anyway, the Adult Learning classes are a delight in comparison. I mean, exposing my 48 year old body to other mature adults (especially the retired gentlemen) is considerably more flattering than the unspoken but unmistakable Yuk reaction of teens who probably equate me with their mothers... in fact I have two children older than them myself. The Adult classes are chatty, we have a laugh, and everyone apologises for how they've depicted me (it really doesn't bother me, I can't draw for toffee myself so anything they do is better than my own attempt would be). This week the tutor had a 'crib sheet' printed out on cardboard which they were all supposed to attach to the tops of their easels. As she went through it I mimed the things she told them to watch out for (angles of rib cage and hips, negative shapes, weight on one foot, overall shape of pose on the paper etc) and by the second class I added the aircraft gestures for emergency exits; we made a passable comedy double act. Unfortunately I won't see them again as she's booked other models for the remaining three weeks. The upside is that I can send my monthly claim sheets in today and might even get paid by the end of the month, that would be very useful. (Don't mention the C word, please).
My shiatsu therapist told me she's doing some modelling in a couple of weeks, for a private Friday morning group in a village hall which I've done before. She asked for some tips, as she's new to this. I told her to think of it as yoga, count breaths, relax every muscle which doesn't have to be used, and don't do a pose with arms above the head for longer than ten minutes. Most of it is a matter of experience, learning what artists want and like, and how your body feels comfortable for long periods. I forgot to tell her to stretch lots in-between, but I'm sure she'll work that out for herself. I'm waiting to compare notes with my choir friend after her first session at the private school too.

Time to slow down

2008-11-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

OK, I've been doing too much and I have to cut down.
It was really hard to get up this morning (Sunday) to be at my friend's for 9.30 am to do some video of us performing poetry - they all said 'Are you all right?'
So now I know that 6 different jobs in a week is too much, especially when added to a day for my Diploma course, teaching my own course Tues eve, a gym session, a 2-hour choir rehearsal and a poets meeting. Oh, and the usual mothering stuff of course. Plus going to visit a dear friend for 24 hours because she's in pain and can't get out much.
The first 2 jobs were fine, Adult Learning classes, I like the tutor (she plays music in the sessions) and it was the same format for both. The 2nd was in a new town and venue, just a little bit too far for me to travel though. Thursday was a very long day, 4 hours at the private school with an early start, then another 2 1/2 that evening for an untutored group of artists. They booked me months ago, and it was cash in hand, but again a longish drive and I wasn't back home until 10.15 pm.
Friday morning was supposed to be my slow morning, but the private school secretary had phoned in a panic on Thursday afternoon saying their other model had let them down, and could I possibly do periods 1 & 2 for them? Reluctantly, I dragged myself over there to start work before 9am, heading straight off afterwards to do 5 hours for the degree students at the college. At least they were kind to me! It was my last session for them, and I asked the tutor what was happening about my monthly salary, because I still have no idea when I'm getting paid, or how much, and I'm really out of pocket now with all the money I keep spending on petrol...
'It's all in hand,' he assured me.
So pretty grumpy today. I need time off and I need some money. Unfortunately the two rarely go together.

A bloody nuisance

2008-11-01T08:40:00.001-07:00

If you're male, or particularly squeamish, you may not want to read this post. It gets a bit bloody.
It's half term for most of us, but not for the prestigious private school a mere few miles away, who had booked me for Thurs and Fri morning this week from 8.45-12.30. 'There'll be breaks,' she said, 'and we'll pay you for four hours.' They have someone else for the other Fridays which I can't do because of my college work, but I'll be doing Thurs mornings for them until the end of term. Cash work, ie it goes into my self-employed accounts with invoices, greatly appreciated.
Two days before starting the Arts secretary phoned me again and said I didn't need to come in until 11.00 on the first day 'but we'll pay you the four hours, as agreed.' OK, no complaints my end.
As it happened, it was just as well I didn't have to be there early. I woke up to find my period had just started, unexpectedly and without warning. And I'd run out of tampons. So at least I had time to call in a supermarket on the way and stock up.
The class were Lower Sixth and it was their first time with a life model. The Secretary flapped around worrying that it was too cold in the room for me - the sudden cold snap had caught them on the hop, heating repairs or something - so I assured her that I'd worked in colder situations before and that I'd cope with the fan heater.
The room has changed since the last time I worked there, some years back. They now have a large roughly oval table-cum-bench in the centre of the room, with lots of drawers beneath it, and the easels set up all around. 'I've got you a duvet,' she said proudly, 'and some clean sheets from Housekeeping.' (It's a boarding school with local day pupils too). I changed in the girls toilets and sat on the edge of the table in my dressing gown, watching the students file in and waiting for the tutor to arrive.
He's very 'old school'. And the whole focus of the class and his teaching is on pleasing the A-level examiners. So no friendly chat, no introducing the model by name, everyone called him Sir and they were straight into a whole double session of ten minute poses, outline only, no details, using pencil on A3 or A2 paper. The girls seem to be terribly thin and the boys have bizarrely-gelled 'windswept' hairstyles. I don't really enjoy this particular job, but there is a lot of good art-work to look at, and from my vantage point on the tables I can see the tops of some glorious Autumnal trees (oak and beech I think), and a Scots pine. I concentrated on staring out of the window and let the students get used to seeing and drawing a naked woman their mothers' age. It's always a shock to start with.
By the end of the session I was indeed freezing, it took me the rest of the day to warm up again, and the news was full of the freak hailstorm and floods in a Devon village not 100 miles from here. My oldest daughter was trying to get home by train and kept texting me to apologise for further delays, cancellations and re-routings.
That night I was bleeding heavily and had to keep getting up for loo visits. On Friday I was in the Arts office all changed and ready to work before 9am, but just as the tutor came to collect me I felt a drip on my leg - it was bright red. Panic stations. I told him I'd just nip to the loo on my way over, and hastily stuffed a second tampon in over the first - not recommended, girls, but needs must in this case.
I spent the whole double period (no pun intended) hoping I wouldn't leak onto their nice clean sheets, while doing exactly the same ten-minute poses as the day before but for a different class. This time I asked for an extension lead and put the fan heater on the table with me. Much warmer.
Back to the Arts office to make myself coffee, and the Secretary agreed to pay me monthly by invoice, asking the tutor to sign a chitty so she could go and get the cash. I thought I might have a whole hour's break before the next class, if it was indeed going to run, but no. Suddenly the tutor re-appeared and said, 'Right, the Upper Sixth have decided they do need some more life drawings in their portfolios.' And off I went to fill in the second half of their single period with yet more ten minute poses.
Then it was the real break - but I could go home now they said. 'Sorry we're still working out the sessions...' said the tutor. 'Take the money and run,' advised the secretary.
I pocketed the eighty quid and lounged around the Art Exhibition downstairs instead - figure drawings, some from local artists I know. Great stuff.

Busiest Week Part 2

2008-10-21T09:42:00.000-07:00

OK, so the last post covered up to Thursday lunchtime - but the day was far from over. In fact I managed to spend one whole hour at home between 8.20 am and 10.15 pm...
From the college I go straight to choir practice, two hours every Thursday afternoon with our (alternative) community choir. I then had an extra sing-through of an old number we want to revive, just to make sure those of us who've been in it from the year dot (1993 I think) could remember our parts. And a rush over to the venue where I run my poetry courses to pay some rent money. And off to the secondary school to catch my youngest in her first ever hockey team game. I'm not a standing-on-sidelines mum, as a rule. Fortunately it was sunny and not too cold, and I could give encouraging feedback on her goalkeeping even though they'd lost quite dramatically to the other school.
So my hour at home was between 5.10 and 6.10, during which time of course I had to feed her and bundle the games kit into the washing machine. And off to work again...
7.00-9.30 in a delightful village hall near the A303. Getting there was a bit of a pain. My chosen route takes me along a very narrow lane to reach an underpass, the most direct route to the village concerned. And for the first time ever I met a vehicle coming the other way. It was dark. The headlights dazzled me. I'd just come round a bend and down a slope, so assumed the other driver would back into the nearest passing-point. We both waited. No-one moved.
Eventually I decided to try reversing. Well, someone had to or we'd be there all night. Did I mention my clutch is at the end of its adjustment and will need replacing fairly soon? So reversing uphill and back round a bend involved stalling at least twice and a fair amount of cursing. When I finally managed to pull into a gateway I noted that the other driver was a woman (I'm afraid) - in a 4x4. And she could have backed into the farmyard just past where we met, really easily. Nuff said.
This particular group of artists are unfailingly charming and proud of their little hall with its community breakfasts once a month. This week there were only two of them, which made me worry a little for their future - but I did hear the Treasurer mentioning the £140 in their bank account so no immediate likelihood of credit collapse. For such charming people, they seem to require quite difficult poses, slightly longer than I'd normally like to hold them. I've learnt this now and argue back - no, I'm not bending forward like that for fifteen minutes, no matter how much you want to imagine me bathing... After the tea-break with its chance for general chat, we did two longer poses of 'general abandonment' on a table dressed to resemble a bed. They were very pleased at how abandoned I could look.
Friday was another whole day at the college. One of those evocative Autumn mornings with the mist rising like steam from the river as I crossed it, and dew so thick it was almost frost. A heron stood sentinel by a rhyne, large and grey and hunched in the morning's chill. Reaching the town I drove past an easy parking space, then couldn't find another one and was stuck in the traffic queues for ten minutes until I could turn round and take it from the opposite direction. The room was cold for the first session, two poses. Charcoal and chalk on brown paper, followed by a close-up of one body section using cardboard 'viewfinders' - a rectangular hole to look through while held at arm's length. They're really coming on, this class. Some good results.
Off to the other campus and again, plenty of time sitting around reading my book and drinking coffee before the students wandered in from their break. They were all knackered after a day in London traipsing round galleries the day before. I was feeling similar so we agreed not to push ourselves too hard.
The tutor kept dropping in with promises of marks to come soon - she and their other tutor were in the staff room upstairs discussing their progress. Otherwise we were pretty much left to our own devices. They complained a little at the lack of tutorial content (the idea was that they should be self-directed by now), so in the end I took over a bit, suggesting poses and times and even towards the end, telling them to get out their sketch pads and work hard and fast with a few short poses. I've picked up a lot of tips over the years it seems. They finally got their previous assignment back as I changed ready to leave.
And so to the weekend, which should have been relaxing but was in fact spent in a state of high anxiety over the 'practice session'I had to lead for my Diploma course on Monday.
As this is now Tuesday, I can tell you that all the obsessive sleepless thinking paid off. But it was most uncomfortable at the time.

A full-on week, part 1

2008-10-18T12:11:00.001-07:00

What a busy week I've had. So pleased to reach the weekend in one piece - but now I should be working on the session plans for next Monday and Tuesday. Oh well. Blog time instead.
On Tuesday this week I did six hours for an Adult Learning day-school. The tutor still wasn't sure if it was running until the day before, as only six people had signed up, but they decided it was silly to keep cancelling them or no-one would even bother to enrol any more, so it went ahead in the end. It was held in a new room in the adult learning centre, as the college were moving rooms around in the main building and the one allocated to 'us' was currently full of furniture. I've worked for this tutor many times before and we have an easy rapport. I was impressed at how much she managed to fit in during the day - short poses initially to assess their standard and needs, then a variety of techniques and media to stretch them and teach new methods of working. Drawing with pens on newspaper was a new one on me, too!
I spent my time during the longer poses musing on the sessions I have to teach - the poetry course, and a practice session with the whole group on my diploma course. Modelling is an excellent part-time job for poets! Not much time when I got home before I had to go out again to run the poetry course, then a short soak in the bath and I fell into bed.
Wednesday was gym day, as I couldn't do it on Tuesday due to the aforementioned work. I was also due to pick up a second-hand bed for my youngest, which meant co-ordinating a friend to arrive with his van after we'd dismantled it in another friend's teenager's bedroom. At least it made me feel better about the state of my own almost-teenager's bedroom... and then in the evening (with my hall full of metal bed frame and other parts of it littering various nooks downstairs)I was off to Morris Dance practice! Lots of leaping and cavorting aerobically, trying to fit the stick moves with the not-quite-mastered steps while following the required figures, oh, and there were words too. And we have to make our own costumes. And it's in two week's time. But it WILL be lots of fun. I know it will.
On Thursday and Friday I woke increasingly stiff and tired, but dragged myself off to the college both days for more modelling. In Thursday's session they were working with white and black ink over pencil sketches initially, although chalk, charcoal and coloured pastels were also available. They were studying Giacometti, a sculptor best known for his elongated figures, but they were supposed to emulate his oil sketches, especially of people, and of those set in his studio. Small figures, strong use of line, set in large spaces, with minimal use of colour, very muted. I read the book about him in the break and discovered that Sartre wrote an essay on his work, about how he paints fullness and emptiness.
The students struggled. Two poses in the first half, two more in the second half, this time focussing on head and shoulders, then a longish standing pose. The tutor left the room for a while, during which time my mobile went off in my jeans pocket in my bag. They giggled at the theme tune from the Pink Panther.
As I left to drive to choir practice two men were planting pansies in a raised bed, blocks of yellow, white and purple against the rich tawny of newly-turned compost. Driving home in sunshine I marvelled at the Autumn colours again, the tawny of the earth reflected in leaves, the deep purple of elderberries, the scarlet of rosehips and crimson of haws, the pale blue sky with silver-grey clouds, the first ploughed fields.
I decided that if I had another three lives I'd be an artist, a musician and a biologist/naturalist. I love these moments of intense happiness at just being me, here, now...

Matisse and Morris - no, not William

2008-10-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday evening. I could, if I'd tried really, really hard, have made it to a poetry event at the Brewhouse (Taunton) for National Poetry Day. Instead I marked it by chatting to our local peripatetic poet and current Chaired Bard, who was attempting to sell his poetry scrolls on the High Street - oh, and signing up to an internet dating site... as in, actually subscribing rather than hovering on the sidelines as I've been doing for about a month now. Not expecting much, but you never know.
I won't bore you with yet more accounts of golden sunshine and thick white duvets of mist on my way to work today - it was a glorious morning though, and Ella Fitzgerald agreed. Although on my return I was feeling so bouncy I changed to Manu Chao.
I have to admit I was feeling decidedly stiff this morning, not only from a hard gym work-out on Tuesday but also - last night I went along to see what the local Crow Morris team was about, and ended up with a fierce aerobic workout while learning the very weird steps and the more conventional sets/changes of their repertoire. This is for an event in three week's time so I doubt I'll be up to scratch by then, we'll have to see how desperate they are to make up another eight (danced in teams of eight, in black rags with feathers and sticks).
The tutor (the quirky painterly one) apologised for the coldness of the room, and suggested that I might prefer to start off clothed, at which chance I jumped (gr.) especially as I'm currently experiencing one of my increasingly rare periods. (Before you ask, tampons. And last June.)
They were studying Matisse this week, and he spent quite a while trying to explain what he wanted - a 'flat, 2D graphic approach' like his later work, so an 'interesting, challenging' pose for me. He told me it was for the first part of the session, and they'd change after the tea-break, but I knew it wouldn't; he's said that before and I always end up having to hold it for the whole three hours. As was, indeed, the case again. So perched on a green-covered chair in my black trainers, blue jeans and olive-green jumper, one foot bent beneath me, a knee in front of my face and an elbow on it, head in hand, I prepared to while away the session by musing on my recent Poetry for Personal Growth session, the first in a course I've devised and am running in my home town.
In the break, the tutor told me that the plans for our contracts were coming along. And I told him that he wouldn't have me for Thursday mornings after half term because I've agreed to work at a local private school - four hours at ten pounds an hour every week being too good to miss, at least until Christmas.
I think the students were quite relieved to see me clothed this week, and it did help with the project too. Flat areas of colour, licence to move things around if they wanted to, or change colours from the original (one gave me a fetching plum sweater), and the results were laid out on the floor at the end for my perusal. Not bad at all.
Driving home, the clouds could have been painted by Utrillo.
(Think that's who I mean).

Busybusybusy

2008-10-07T02:07:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd start the day with a little light blogging - over breakfast, and after an hour at the gym. I pushed myself this morning, adding extra time and effort to my cardio regime. Exercise is good for anxiety...
Why am I anxious? I have a tendency to do everything-at-once, or nothing-at-all, and I've entered an everything-at-once phase. I knew it was coming; I've been relaxing hard, preparing myself for it. And it began with my extra hours at the college.
So far this term I've been doing five hours a week there, three on Thursday mornings and two on Friday mornings. I now have a block booking for five weeks of five hours at the other campus with the Foundation degree group. On Friday, straight after the other one. Last Friday I left the house at 8.15 am (leaving the Youngest in bed as she had an Inset day - she probably stayed in bed all day, on her laptop chatting to friends on MSN or having babies on Sims2) with a banana and my dressing gown, and I returned at 5.00 pm after 7 hours straight modelling. To wash up, cook dinner and go out to cover the box office for an amateur play at our Arts Centre.
It wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. The work that is, not the play. When the tutor phoned me to arrange this she'd said I could have half an hour for lunch and a short break in the afternoon too and I got the impression she was some sort of slave-driving dragon with a bunch of hyper-keen students who'd push me to the limits. Of course they were all very laid back.
I deliberately wore a loose two-piece skirt suit (green velvet, if you want to know) so I could do a quick change and sprint to the car to drive over to the other campus in time. But when I arrived (confusing the Receptionist, who'd thought I was a visiting tutor and tried to send me to pick up the registers for the day) they were all on their coffee break, and by the time the tutor had faffed around re-arranging the furniture and draping old ragged sheets to her satisfaction we were twenty minutes into the session anyway.
She seemed most concerned that it was cold in the room, and had two heaters pointed in my direction, although at the end of their flexes they were still several yards away. I assured her that I'd known that particular room much colder - for some reason the life drawing/art room is in the basement at the far end of the long two-level building, and the heating wasn't on for the winter yet. Institutional rules. Anyway after three or four shortish 'warm-up' standing and squatting poses she suggested that I drape my dressing gown over my shoulders for the longer sitting pose.
The students were all 'women of a certain age' (conversation over lunch was mainly about children leaving home), very friendly and a cohesive group in their second year of the course. One was in a wheelchair, but I only saw her for the morning session because she had a fall at the start of the lunchbreak and went home. It seems that in order to get to the disabled toilet, she has to go out of the back door (a fire exit), get into her car and drive round to the front of the building, on a higher level, because there was no lift. She'd slipped getting into her car. The afternoon session started late due to a heated discussion led by the tutor as to whether it was allowed to help her once she'd fallen. Health and Safety regulations stipulate that it was not the responsibility of staff or students, and that she was supposed to have a 'helper', who was still in the pipeline, having being caught up in red tape and bureaucratic fuddle.
Once it had started, the exercises turned out to be fun - for me to watch. The students had five minutes to start an 'interpretation' of me, then had to move anticlockwise with their materials (own choice of media here) and continue for four minutes on their neighbour's, then move again and work for three minutes... Mayhem, laughter, complaints. The complaints being largely that it was impossible to follow someone working with ink and wide brush when you're working with a fine-line pen, or charcoal, or cont'e, or whatever.
They discussed the results, then moved onto the next exercise - clockwise this time, and leaving the media with the picture so they had to get used to working with unfamiliar materials. Some very interesting results, but nothing you'd want to hang on your wall (although I was rather taken with the one which had me looking like a Borg from Deep Space Nine, with a distinct monocle). I look forward to further sessions with this group.
As to being paid for all this - it's still in the pipeline too. I phoned the Arts Administrator this week, who suggested I call back and speak to the Head of Art, who told me he was waiting for the year's assessment of hours from the tutors...
OK, back to the real work of the day - finalising my lesson plan for the first session of the poetry course I'm running - starting tonight. And printing out ten copies of the poems and quotes we'll be using. And reviewing yesterday's Diploma course session and journalling it and reading all the hand-outs and putting them in the right place in my files and... waiting for the rain to stop to go into town too.
At least the Children's Book Group event I'd organised at our local library on Saturday morning went well, as did the presentation I was involved in at my first meeting of a professional association on Saturday afternoon, in Bristol. And my first live interview on local radio was postponed until next week. By which time I'll be worrying about the session I have to lead for the Diploma course... Why do I do this to myself?

Ladies who draw

2008-09-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

It's Monday night and I've just come back from a rare village hall modelling job - something I used to do a fair amount of but nowadays it's mainly the college. I had a phone call late afternoon from one of the organisers checking that I was still going - and asking for a lift please as her van was out of action. Half an hour later she called me again to say it had been fixed. I was stuck behind slow traffic on the way there (between 6.00 and 6.30) so a little concerned that I'd be late, but on arriving there was only one Artist present, standing outside the locked hall, so I needn't have worried. Another Artist had gone to get the key, and the woman who'd phoned me didn't arrive until ten minutes into the session.
It was very laid-back and informal, untutored, and only four of them present this evening - three grey-haired ladies and one with hair as blonde as mine - and mine's been dyed for years. The first half was easy with 5, 10 and 15 minute poses, whatever I wanted to do, and there was an efficient fan heater blasting away at my back. Great. I'll have to write an assessment of the various heaters I've suffered under sometime.
They were very keen to demonstrate the lovely new kitchen that had been fitted at this hall since the last time I'd sat for them - lottery money we all reckoned. State-of-the-art oven, double hot cupboard, dishwasher, dinky little stainless steel hand sink as well as the main double sink - and look at this swish corner cupboard with moving parts! How long do you think that'll last before someone breaks it? (Shall we just play with it until it does...) We drank fruit teas and munched on chocolate rich tea biscuits and chatted about this and that, admiring photos of the new grandchildren. I had to purposefully lead them back into the main hall to get them started again.
'Let's have one long pose,' someone said, so the cushions were re-arranged and I lay down with one leg sort of crossed over the other from the hip, positioned the heater to my advantage and stared into space for about forty-five minutes. What was I thinking of this time? Friends to contact, snatches of songs from choir rehearsal, how lucky I am to be a poet, how my middle-age spread is spreading but I don't seem to care too much...
I phoned the Youngest as soon as I was dressed to see if she was still on her own - she was - and to reassure her that I was on my way home. Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo tonight and an easy drive.

England my England

2008-09-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

A silver-grey morning. Driving to the college again, further signs of impending Autumn - the blush on a row of field maples, the odd yellow patch on oak trees. Why do different trees change into different colours, I wonder? That's one for the New Scientist Queries page. I glimpse two men on top of a haystack; a number of swans on the river half-hidden by hanging willows. What's the collective noun for swans? I'm sure we were taught that at Junior school (I think it's a parliament of owls, a convocation of crows...). Feels like it should be a pride of swans, or even a royalty of swans... anyway, that's the sort of aimless musing I like to fill my head with while driving.
Today the students were learning about shapes and curves. They had to draw me (in 'dynamic poses' lasting 3 minutes each) just by describing the curves, starting with the longest ones and working down to shorter ones, so maybe starting with out-stretched hand down to toe, then the gap between legs, all the way to kneecaps and (erm) tummy... OK. Maybe it was tummy then kneecaps. Five poses on one large sheet of paper.
The next demonstration was in making shapes on the page and joining or overlapping them to create the figure, with rounded scribbles to suggest the 3D effect. The tutor was not very good at it, and apologised. I noted that he carefully folded his effort later before dropping it in the bin. Despairing cries of 'I can't do this' came at regular intervals. But I have to say that after an hour and a half of intensive work - for me as well as them - most of them had improved dramatically. The last, longer, pose was to put together the measuring from last week with the curves and rounding out shapes of this week. Some of them were even recognisably me. I praised the tutor when they'd all gone, and he sounded very relieved that it had worked.
Driving home I kept noticing shapes, textures, forms and colours repeated in the hedgerows. The creamy fluffball shape of meadowsweet, the festoons of grey-white traveller's joy - or old man's beard as we used to called it - the flatish pinky-white flowers of yarrow, the big bold trumpets of bindweed, the spiky seed heads of teasel, the flatter ones of hedge-parsley. I love England. I love how we, the English, and whatever we called ourselves before we were English, have lived on this land, grown into and with this land, and shaped this land, over so many centuries. I belong here. It is familiar, and beautiful, as are the changing seasons.
There were three men on top of the haystack this time. I think I got stuck behind their feeder-tractor for miles, bumping along with its trailer gaily decorated with loose hay. That was after being stuck behind a member of the forty-club - you know, the ones who drive at forty miles an hour no matter what. Fortunately I was in no particular hurry. The sun was shining in all its September splendour and I was looking forward to an afternoon spent visiting artists' studios.
When I got home there was a message for me - someone from the college had been given my number and could I call them back about some work... It was for the foundation degree course taught at the other campus, an extra five hours on a Friday for five weeks. Yes. I can cope with that. I think. (I hope).

September sunshine

2008-09-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

I do so love driving to work early on a September morning when there's a white haze across the Levels and the sun's shining through, making the cobwebs all showy like a field full of lacy handkerchiefs. There's something amazing about this time of year, the low sun yellow but the leaves not yet turning - apart from the horse chestnut which is now half tawny. A friend at the poetry group last night described it as the 'fifth season', apparently a Chinese phrase. I drove past maize fields too, spiky red tops in ranks, almost harvest time. And into a village swathed in mist, the lollipop lady standing out in her Hi-vis jacket to shepherd infants across the road.
I'm so lucky that I enjoy driving to work. Changed the CD too, it's been laid-back jazz for a couple of weeks but I switched to dub/beat today, Dreadzone.
The other tutor at college, and a new class of teenagers. They seem older than the AS-level group on Fridays, but they're not. Eleven of them in jeans, and one with funky 3/4-length trousers. They have personalities. They talk back to the tutor.
Today he had them working with compressed charcoal and white emulsion and water, showing them how to wet the charcoal (it only works with the compressed variety) and how this particular emulsion is rich in chalk so they blend well. Messy stuff. He loves making these prissy well-dressed teens all messy. Suspect he spent the early 80's as an anarchist punk.
So I took a sitting pose on an upholstered chair (both legs curled up beneath me, one arm nonchalantly drooping off the chair-back) for half an hour. Which extended to the whole of the first half. Fortunately I'd chosen a pose that was quite comfortable for me.
In the break we booked up a couple more dates and he mentioned, again, that we were going on contract - once they'd worked out how many hours were needed and divided them between the 3 of us. There are other models looking for work, he said, but it's easier to stick with 3, except for the odd times which we can't cover. I, for example, can't do Mondays or Thurs afternoons.
So it looks like I'll be doing about 5 hours a week, Thurs and Fri mornings - unless the part-time Foundation starts up (some problem with numbers and whether it will actually run) in which case I get Tues mornings too, at least some of the time. At the moment I go to the gym on Tuesdays, a much-needed return to routine after about a year of being a slacker.
So, the the second half. Same pose, they haven't all finished, in fact all of them would benefit from continuing this painting... Ow. What is comfortable for an hour really starts to hurt after two. I filled my musing time usefully by more planning for my 'poetry for personal growth' course, starting October. Looking forward to it.

I'm back, and so's the college.

2008-09-12T04:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, long time no post. I decided this morning to re-start this blog, just to keep me writing really. And you never know, I might make new friends or catch up with old ones again.
So, a lovely September morning and I'm driving back to work at the college after a long break, enjoying the low yellow sun shining silver on wet grass, the red of hips and haws (I've always wanted to use 'hips and haws' as the title of a book or story - or maybe poem - nicely ambiguous when spoken!) and the browny-orange of the first leaves to turn - horse chestnuts.
Another new class of teenagers who've never seen a naked adult in the flesh (only on film I expect, and I don't resemble a movie star). Fortunately the tutor and I are very comfortable with each other. He's primed them with lots of diagrams and tips on measuring, so for the first pose I just stand in the middle of the room for them.
'Standing like a mountain' is the yoga pose I was aiming for, straight spine, shoulders back, tummy and bum tucked in, feet slightly apart, head resting gently on lengthened spine. Half an hour was quite manageable. This was a short class, all over by 10.30 so I only had chance for one other standing pose, facing a different way and with a slight twist and tilt - nothing too challenging. As usual, I examined the students as much as they examined me - only 2 lads in this class and lots of girls. Fashion statements vied with slouchy comfort, hairstyles varied from expertly cut and coloured in layers, through the common short-and-gelled, to I-didn't-bother-brushing-it-this-week.
I know I've put on some weight over this year. I've started my gym routine again after many months without, so aiming to get back in trim, plus I was wondering if my flushes would be obvious... as I was looking straight ahead I couldn't check if my whole body flushed pink, but I did feel it, and the resultant sheen of sweat...
He's now booked me for every Friday class until Christmas, as the other 2 models they use can't do that particular slot. Next week I'm doing a session for the other tutor too and I'm hoping he will tell me that I'm now on a contract - a regular wage will really help with my Housing Benefit nightmares.
Driving home the sky was fading to greyish-white with less blue, and now here comes the rain - heavy as usual but hopefully just a short sharp shower. No chance to mow the lawns again. Better get on with editing poetry then - I had some ideas while driving of how to improve yesterday's Villanelle.
Oh, and this evening I'm off to a private view, one of 'my' artists is exhibiting in Somerset Art Weeks. I might even be tempted to buy something... though probably not a rendition of myself.

musings and observations

2007-10-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

Another full day at the nearest college. I hadn't met this tutor before and he'd phoned in saying he'd be late, so one of the others started off the class with some ten minute short poses for their sketch book. Meaning that I met this slim young chap in rather unusual circumstances, standing naked in front of his slightly embarrassed class of mixed adolescents. I think we both coped admirably, most professional of us. Later he told me he was late because he'd witnessed a major pile-up on the drive to work and had stopped to administer first aid and give a witness statement.
So after this dramatic start the rest of the day withered away into boredom. A half-hour standing pose challenged my muscle control a little, not aided by the stuffiness of the room and my rather late night, which meant I was trying not to fall asleep on my feet as the time went on. This was followed by a sitting pose until the end of the morning session, with a five minute break every half hour. Humdrum stuff, just hard on the muscles.
In the lunch-break he accompanied me to the personnel office where I handed in the first lot of forms (applying for the job I was already doing), realised I had forgotten my photo ID, and picked up the new form - how to get paid. I went back to the Art building for lunch and filled it in, followed by some musing...
I'd forgotten how much I like being in places where people learn - colleges, universities. Even schools I suppose. People learning fires me up, in a slightly different way to people creating, but roughly similar. At the next table a woman is doing her homework, consulting a Spanish/English dictionary. Lecturers breeze in and out in their moments free from responsibility and (useful) stress. Students chatter in groups and discover themselves anew - a lifelong journey indeed. And I am here too - neither one nor the other, privileged observer who is here to be observed.
Did the C19th anthropologists ever wonder how much their studied tribes learnt about an alien culture? Observer and observed are not always separate. All human interaction is a two-way flow.
The afternoon session was with an exclusively female class. The tutor told me they were very relieved to have a female model this week. They'd found it difficult to be faced with a naked wrinkly old man. The format was exactly the same as the morning session though, and equally as boring and taxing for me. Never mind. I might get paid soon.
Thursday dawned with very thick mist and a golden sunshine trying to break through. I had to find a new venue so left very early and joined the ghostly lines of vehicles snaking their way across the Levels. Turning off towards the village I stopped for a while by a bridge to observe swans and the multitude of spider webs glistening with water drops. Birds sang continuously and the water roared over a weir. I got out my diary with the scribbled directions. As I continued on my way it became apparent that I'd taken the wrong turning towards the village, and was in fact approaching from the opposite direction, but after some confusion I did enjoy the drive and the discoveries, and was still early enough to read an article or two in my new writing magazine.
The group and their tutor were like old friends already, they'd simply moved venue to a smaller,warmer and more modern hall. They are having an exhibition together soon and are going to send me an invite for the private view, which I'm already quite excited about. I might even see some drawings or paintings of myself exhibited, properly, on a wall, for all to see... success of a sort, I suppose.

new term, new college

2007-10-03T02:56:00.000-07:00

Not a very exciting heading, is it? Sorry, bit sleepy still, overslept this morning, after going to bed at 10.30 last night too... must have been overdoing things... new man in my life, that sort of stuff.
I did 2 hours last week at a new venue but with my favourite tutor, and started a totally new job this week - at the nearest college, the one I said I wouldn't work at because my son goes there. He could do without the embarrassment. But I had a desperate phone call from one of the tutors, they were having great difficulty finding models, could I possibly do a whole day (6 hours)... or two...
Well, the first whole day was cancelled due to a flood in the Art Dept, but this week I turned up bright and early on a Monday morning to meet him at Reception. After checking with son to make sure none of his mates are doing 2nd year Art courses.
We walked across the entire college (fortunately it had just stopped raining) to the newish Art block and I was introduced to the dedicated Life Drawing room. Ah, what luxury - compared to my usual working conditions. No battered toilets or poky dusty stockrooms to change in, but a little cubicle with shelf and chair and box full of (clean) material for draping etc. The class had only seen one real live model before - male - as the previous week they'd been drawing mannikins, so I did my usual 'total nonchalance, gaze out of the window' act while they got used to me. Nice easy session - ten minutes standing so they could sketch proportions, followed by a long pose sitting upright in a chair, with breaks. During the long break we went to the staff room where I met other tutors and had coffee.
At the lunch break he took me over to the Admin block and we started on the tortuous procedure of giving me a job... the first two lots of forms were a formal application and a police disclosure form, which I am to return next time I'm in and we'll start the second round... wonder when I might get paid then - in time for Christmas, perhaps?
Talking of money, I'm still engaged in the delights of re-applying for Housing Benefit - for two weeks last April and the period from the end of May until September. I managed to send off two letters last week and a completed form yesterday, and am now awaiting Round Five (hoping I have the stamina to stay in the ring until I can achieve the knock-out blow and regain some semblance of sanity). I've discovered that I need to limit my income, basically - can't do too much work in one week. Ah well, I suppose the Universe is trying to give me a message in all this...
Monday afternoon was a repeat of the morning session, but with a different tutor and class. I went home quite happy with the day and looking forward to returning next week. I think this could become my favourite college work. Better conditions AND higher pay than the previous one (slightly...)
Tuesday evening I went off for two hours for a session with the inspirational tutor - the first of the term, as they'd had to re-schedule due to their new Art block not yet being ready... so it was back to the Annex where last year's evening classes had been held. Very cold room, she'd brought two heaters which helped, but I was still cold by the end of the evening - car heater on full as I drove through grey drizzle. Lots of forms for everyone to fill in of course - except she hadn't brought any for me to claim my wages, so she'll get someone to send them to me. I met another Model, who appears to be the partner of one of the artists; she asked for my phone number and wants to call me for a chat, and to pass on work we can't fit in. Friendly woman.
And tonight (Wed) I'm off to see my favourite tutor again for Adult Learning and Leisure. Hmm, too much work this week, better do a lot less next week then - I think they average out four or five weeks to work out your 'usual' income.
Apart from work, I went to a private view on Sunday of a textile art exhibition, wrote two new poems, and attended a poetry reading on Monday night. Thursday I'll be reading my winning entry at a conference and picking up the cheque - which covers expenses and a bit more, but is hardly riches. Good chance to network though.
And next week my Diploma course begins.
What it is to be lazy. Where's that novel I was losing myself in earlier, it's time for another session...

payback time

2007-09-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

It's September. I could go on about the various trees changing colour and the daylength rapidly shortening, but there's something more important on my agenda at the moment.
Money.
It now appears that all that extra work I was doing in the Spring has simply landed me in the Benefits Trap - by earning more, I am actually losing out. I seem to owe more for rent, council tax and overpaid housing benefit than I actually earned... and that's before factoring in the hours of writing letters, filling in forms, phoning and sending yet more evidence, and detailed accounts of everything I did to check if their figures add up. I'm working on yet more letters and forms this morning. It's just as well my new modelling job was cancelled due to a flood in the Art Department yesterday.
More interesting posts to come soon, I hope. I'd like to keep this blog up - even if no-one reads it apart from myself and one or two regular admirers...

The Generation Gap

2007-05-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

The first thing I noticed when I walk into the 'life model' hut at college was the enormous wet patch on the floor, all around the heater. The friendly tutor told me that the ceiling had nearly collapsed under the weight of water trapped in the roof - he'd had to slit the ceiling panel and put a bucket underneath to catch the flood. The college had given up on maintenance for the huts as their budget was fully stretched building the new Arts block....
The lesson was based on a Schiele drawing - thankfully one of the less unflattering ones - and was about the use of line. Six girls and three boys arranged themselves around the room while I did one of my famous 'perched on the edge of a table' poses, but this being the friendly tutor at least the table was padded and covered. Half an hour became forty minutes - he checked to make sure I was OK with that - and we had some good conversation during the ensuing break. I'd been observing the students and noticing they could be categorised as cocksure youths with hairstyles, and thin bored timid girls, so we got into a discussion of teenagers in general and in particular. He has four of them at home, lucky man. This lot are sixteen to seventeen - one is his oldest daughter - and I could assure him that they did develop more personality and originality, but that yes, they were growing up in a completely different social and economic milieu to our times - we had feminism, Thatcher, and mass unemployment; they have consumerism, technology and debt as the norm.
There were only four students in the second group and I did the same pose, but facing the other way. The undergrowth outside the window is now thick, green and impenetrable. I watched the occasional dapple of sunlight struggle through to reach the grubby floor, wavering like light reflected off moving water. Then I started imagining drawing hands - mainly my own - as the next stage of my personal artistic odyssey. Hands and gloves seem to be a bit of a theme. And by the end of the session I'd moved on to imagining making a music track with multiple samples of blackbirds' song - liquid honey over pebbles interspersed with the sharp chirr of alarm... shame I don't have the skills or equipment to create it, but that's usually the case with my creative flights of fancy.
So all in all, it was pleasant and easy work today, in messy grubby surroundings. I'm not an old hippy for nothing...
The ash trees are finally in leaf. The wild roses are flowering, weeks too early. And it was raining again by the time I got home. No mowing today then.

Even more yummy hats and gloves

2007-05-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

Thursday evening, just got home from my fourth modelling job of the week. Only one more to go, tomorrow morning.
I arrived far too early at the village hall this morning, it didn't seem worth going home after dropping the son off at college. His bike has another puncture. So I took myself off for a walk as I was feeling a bit stiff, about a mile out of the village in intermittent sunshine. Dark grey clouds were louring but I thought I could get back to the car before they emptied all over me. Once I'd passed two noisy strimmers at work in the garden of a newly-renovated cottage (which called itself a villa) I enjoyed the urgent birdsong emanating from several orchards, admired a small group of cows with young calves, and startled some rather large rabbits. Reaching a pumping station I climbed the bank to look at the river, which was alarmingly slightly higher than the road, while enduring the oily boiled cabbage stink of the ubiquitous fields of rape.
Further on there were some very prosperous-looking (ex?)farms, complete with topiary in the gardens and some beautiful horses. I also spotted a moorhen with one half-grown chick on a rhyne. It all reminded me of my time in Norfolk many years ago, when I'd lived in a similar red-brick farm cottage in the middle of nowhere.
I had to remove two layers before I got back back to the car park, the threatened rain didn't fall and the gusty wind was decidedly warm. But the interior of the hall wasn't. The artists complained, and the tutor put the heating on. After a lot of short warm-up poses to Brazilian dance music I wasn't feeling the cold at all.
I'd remembered to bring my own accessories this week, and the tutor had her hat box full of goodies, so we had a field day deciding what to dress me in. One of the artists requested a curled-up pose after so many stretched-out 'limby' ones, so I ended up on a cushion on the floor wearing a hat and red slinky gloves with a floaty scarf wrapped round me. Forty minutes later it was a bit difficult to uncurl for coffee and a huge range of delicious biscuits - I managed to limit myself to one with almonds and pistachios and one curly finger covered in chocolate...
I was determined to wear my long purple velvet gloves and purple feather boa - I had the excuse that one of the artists had the exact shade of purple in her collection of pastels - so after another long curled-up pose which was even more difficult to extricate myself from (fortunately I spent the last ten minutes of it in a state of mystical trance listening to Tallis' Spem in Alium) I had the chance to admire how she'd used it. She'd captured all sorts of colours reflected on my skin too, nice.
The evening session was much the same - short warm-ups to the Brazilian music followed by long accessorised poses. I'd taken my own CD to play this time, called 'Kora So Far' by Ravi (not Ravi Shankar), and as it was their last session the artists used whatever materials they wanted - two worked in watercolour, one in pastels, one with acrylics (I think) and the other tried to stick to pencil drawing until the tutor gently urged him to experiment with some colour. He's one of the slow precise draftsman types, need a bit of loosening up. I had a chat with him during the break and at the end, mainly about books - we share an inability to get rid of books once read, leading to overloaded bookshelves in one's bedroom.
As it was their last session, they had the usual consignment of forms to fill in, and the tutor had to quiz them on their future plans, which was interesting to listen to. She'd brought all the biscuits that were left over from this morning's session too... perhaps she wants me to keep putting the weight on?
No more work for her until hopefully September, but I might invite her to my birthday bash - to play dressing up.
Wild roses in bloom now. A month early.

Busy Busy

2007-05-15T01:42:00.000-07:00

This is my busiest week ever - five modelling jobs scattered around the county, three of them evening work, two of them cash in hand. The kids will be wanting a bonus this weekend.
Monday evening was the untutored village hall group, eight ladies from my age to happily retired. They're still getting the hang of organising themselves co-operatively.
They agreed on the format - two lots of ten minutes, a twenty minutes, a half-hour, then the break, followed by one long pose until 9 o'clock. One lady was delegated to keep the time, and I think she's the one who has worked as a model because she was very good at saying 'ten/five/two minutes to go...', which is extremely helpful to the one with aching muscles who can't see the clock.
Another of the artists told me how much she'd enjoyed my singing - she'd been at one of our choir events. They're all very friendly and pretty good artists too - a pleasure to work with. And every one of them managed to capture my features and 'essence'...
They especially liked my last, long, pose - curled up on a comfortable mattress. Yes, so did I, my back-ache had gone by the time I got up. Makes a nice change to feel better after modelling than before.
Drove home just after dusk accompanied by several bats.
Tuesday evening was an Adult Learning and Leisure group, and this week they were studying Euan Uglow, an artist new to me, so I learnt quite a bit. He was a figurative painter who taught at the Slade school (I met someone who'd studied there at one of last year's evening classes. The tutor seemed impressed so I assumed it was one of the best).
This Euan had a thing about geometry, always placing his subjects in a 'Golden Rectangle' or a square, and taking years to finish a painting. Our students had two hours to do the best they could, so after a few short poses they set me up on a stool for the remainder of the session. Their handout was of a model in a very awkward position with her arms at right angles behind her - there was no way I was doing that, so we plumped for a geometric pose against a corner of the room, feet flat on floor, bum half off stool, arms angled back a little at least - as if I was just getting up.
Didn't hurt too much. No, really.

Hats and gloves

2007-05-11T05:36:00.000-07:00

No college work this Thursday. Instead, I have two weeks of the very cold village hall in the morning, and the Adult Learning and Leisure class with the same tutor in the evening. This is the one who plays music while we're working, she had a couple of ClassicFM compilations this week, but she has been known to play Penguin Cafe Orchestra too.
It was raining all day. I drove across the Levels with the windscreen wipers and heaters on thinking 'the gardens need the rain...' and observing how full the rivers were. The hall was as cold as ever. Even the artists were complaining. The little fan heater did a good job of warming my legs as long as I stood right in front of it.
We started with the usual sequence of ten minute warm-up poses while stragglers struggled in, laden with easels and art materials and raincoats. Then came the fun part - she'd brought a hat box full of nice accessories for me to play with. I helped bring in four padded chairs and drape them to suggest a chaise longue, then selected a wide-brimmed black summer hat with red rose, a red scarf and red leather gloves, and settled down to resemble a Lady Of Leisure being slightly naughty in her back garden. I think. Nice pictures anyway.
After coffee - and delicious biscuits - I did one long pose until almost the end, with a change of props but still lolling at my ease, except for the goose pimples which spread alarmingly across my arms and legs. The last ten minutes were an interesting experiment, she said. ('Note she didn't say an enjoyable experiment,' muttered one artist). They had to stare at me for two minutes or so, measuring my face, then draw me from memory while I went off to get changed.
I was even recognisable on some of them.
The evening session was not so much fun. Last week's model had cancelled at the last minute so they'd spent the evening drawing their own hands instead. So rather than the props I had to cover the work they'd been meant to do before - continuous movement. Oh no, not my favourite. 'A long sequence of very short poses please, maybe twenty seconds each?' I negotiated that up to a minute each, and kept an eye on the clock or counted my own breaths to time the changes. Seriously hard work for both the model (to keep thinking up new positions) and especially the students. I could see how good it was for them, though. It really frees up the line.
So that was basically it for two hours, with breathers and breaks. One of the sequences saw me perched on a high chair and moving only my arms - I expected to look a little like a Hindu Goddess by the end - another had my feet planted firmly and I twisted and moved the rest of me. Ah well, at least it was warm.
More rain coming home, more rain still today. My youngest returns from her school trip soon and will be disappointed that we haven't put her trampoline up. I've been trying to finish my own artistic attempts and clear up, but the second large piece lost a big chunk as I picked it up off the dining table... I made the filler too dry I think, it's crumbled. Most annoying. That was the one with the rusty nails embedded in filler at the bottom, covered with spray paint... anyone would thing I'd been influenced by Miro and Tapies or something.
Anyway, that's my little manic art binge done for a while. I'm back to thinking it's complete crap, after the creative high of thinking it's the most wonderful thing I've ever done. I'm used to it by now.
Better stick to poetry methinks.

Playing and Spraying

2007-05-09T11:51:00.001-07:00

I took a day off work (my bookshop job) today as the youngest is away - and I spent the whole afternoon playing around with messy art stuff and creating interesting effects. Had a fab time. My inner six year old felt really happy to be back.
I'd initially only primed one large board - with interior paint left over from painting a room years ago - but once I'd discovered the joys of masking and spraying and dripping, I couldn't wait to move on. I brought in another of the large white boards and managed to cut it roughly in half, giving me two attempts at spreading filler around in big chunks and painting over it. The most annoying thing was waiting for stuff to dry before I could add the next layer.
The 'theme' is gloves/handprints. I took on board all the various tutors' comments over the last weeks on being experimental, trying out new techniques, and of course sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I'm very happy with the first one I did though, in yellow, black, white and 'rust'. In fact I was so happy with it I brought in yet another board and primed it yellow like the first. This one will probably incorporate rusty nails along with hands.
Unfortunately I can't do any more tonight, and tomorrow I've got 2 modelling jobs and a rehearsal in-between, plus the supermarket trip I promised my poor starving son... but it's all got to be finished and tidied up before Friday at 3pm.
I don't have to wait until I'm doing an Art Foundation course before I can play!
And nor do you. Just give yourself permission and go for it.

Back Being Busy

2007-05-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

I picked up a phone message on Friday evening from the lady who books me for Adult Learning and Leisure - but being a Bank holiday weekend I didn't get back to her until Monday. Oh good, she said. Can you work tomorrow?
I haven't been to this group for ages but I do like the tutor a lot. She was looking a bit forlorn in an empty room with lots of easels spread out, wondering where her students had got to. 'There were ten last week,' she affirmed, 'and I did tell them we had a female model again, after many weeks of an older man. Maybe they're all framing their pictures.' Apparently they have an exhibition starting this weekend, to which I was duly invited, but regrettably I can't make the private view due to daughter's dance classes.
Finally a few artists trickled in - only four altogether, and one of them had brought his frame with him - and I started work. They were studying back views, so I spent the first long pose perching on the edge of a table leaning back - again. The tutor is very thoughtful and brought over a couple of prints for me to look at so I didn't have to stare at black venetian blinds the whole time.
During the break we all helped choose which of several sketches to frame - not one of me this time - and I admired their work. They are good, this lot. Then on to a curved back pose. I sat on a stool with my feet up on a donkey and head down between my knees. 'Ooh, that's weird, great,' they said.
Yes. I can do weird. I'm getting to be quite an expert.
Afterwards I asked advice about spray paints. I'm playing with a collage on a large piece of white board, which I primed with standard interior paint this morning. My youngest is away on a school trip for three days, so I can be as messily creative as I want, all over the dining table.
Incidentally, I forgot to write about how busy I was last week. Several singing gigs, a poetry gig to read at and the monthly poetry group to run, attended my first ever slam, and discovered I'd won 2nd prize in a poetry competition - from last October. Only managed one gym visit though. Seems to be down to one a week now so I cancelled the direct debit in favour of pay per session, it works out cheaper.

A Hornets Nest

2007-05-08T04:30:00.000-07:00

Collage at the college on Thursday morning. Earrings man handed out large sheets of white paper followed by sugar paper in black and beige, plus paper plates of glue and a chunk of cardboard to spread it with. Another nice messy technique for the fashion clones to get their heads round. In fact they are already showing signs of increasing individuality in their attire, an observation noted by talkative tutor last week. He's seen so many classes and groups, of course.
I was asked to do one long pose for the entire session - with break - perched on the edge of the table sort of half-standing and half-leaning. I used my dressing gown as padding, as usual. I had to point out the student who was holding his paper plate sideways as he concentrated on drawing my outline; I just couldn't bear to say nothing and watch his glue drip all over the floor.
There was an observer sitting in for the first part of the session, I'm assuming that earrings man is another tutor-in-training, and maybe that was why the group was so much quieter than normal. But strangely the absolute silence continued even after she'd left, and after the break. Serious concentration broken only by the sound of tearing sugar paper.
I have to say their drawing is improving. Perhaps it's because they all knew the initial sketch would be covered over so were looser and less fussy in its execution, but both I and the tutor were impressed at how much better they are now compared to where they started a few weeks ago. None of them managed to finish their collages in the time allotted, but they're going to continue working on them next week and the one after, when I won't be there. I'm booked for a village hall group instead.
Friday morning was one of those, a portrait class but featuring some of the same students that I'd previously met as a life model. I passed a dead deer on the side of the road as I drove across Somerset, quite a small one but the first I've seen outside Exmoor. It wasn't there on the way back though - probably on its way to someone's freezer.
It was a three hour class, entirely inhabited by women, a newly-formed group and late starting. I did three twenty-minute 'warm-up' poses (I suppose they're still called poses when it's for a portrait rather than full body?), and two hour-long ones, less the break-time. Coffee and chocolate digestives.
The difficult part of sitting for a portrait is keeping your eyes still. My gaze was darting around all over the place, prompting a call of exasperation from one of the artists, so I had to find a technique for staring fixedly at one spot. I used it as a meditation, rather like staring at a candle, and counted slow breaths. But then the first hornet was discovered...
There was a fair amount of distracted discussion as to what it actually was (a queen wasp, perhaps?) and how to remove it safely, accomplished by a down-to-earth woman with cup and sheet of cardboard, and they took a while to settle down again. About half an hour later the second one appeared in a different window. We came to the conclusion that there was a hornet's nest in the eaves, and they were falling in through cracks in the tongue-and-groove ceiling.
At the end of the session I heard the clicking of cameras, and wondered why no-one had asked me if I minded having my photo taken. Then I realised that I was fully clothed, for once, and it didn't matter.

Drips have street cred

2007-04-27T04:21:00.000-07:00

College day, Thursday. The room was empty when I arrived, but the talkative tutor caught me and explained that they were having a quick lesson in how to use ink in their classroom. Earrings man was running the class (have I mentioned his nose ring?), and was obviously quite enthusiastic about the technique, handing round a bag full of twigs and plastic cups of diluted ink. Talkative tutor was in a supporting role with many of his usual pithy comments - such as 'stop drawing like a hairdresser, you need to think like a binman for this', and 'drips are good, drips are cool, drips have street cred'.
I did a couple of fifteen minute poses for them to get the hang of the new way of working, then a longer one up on the table - earrings man said, 'whatever is comfortable for you,' so I told him that it was very difficult to get comfortable on a bare and grubby table. I'd been using my dressing gown to sit on already.
Point taken by both tutors I think. Hopefully the facilities and props will improve a little.
As was inevitable, drops of ink fell on white trainers and pale-coloured trousers and students were sent off to wash it out quick. And a plastic cup full of ink solution was accidentally kicked over onto the already well-stained flooring. Roll on next year and the new Arts building.
Friday was a new group in a new obscure village hall. I've been booked for a few sessions over the course of the whole year, by a man who attends the Tuesday evening group so at least I've met him a couple of times now. I arrived very early having given myself plenty of time to get lost on the way. It was a glorious sunny afternoon and a man was out strimming the verges when I arrived. Two artists were there before me and another two arrived before the start time and made themselves tea in the kitchen. Four retired men. Two women arrived late. They are a non-tutored group, enthusiastic amateur artists of varying styles and ability. One man worked very slowly and painstakingly, managing only most of my head for the five-minute warm-up poses, and two finely detailed and quite accurate drawings in each of the hour-long ones. I wanted to tell him to loosen up and experiment with new techniques, but kept my mouth shut. I'm paid to sit still, not to tell them what to do.
There was a nicely padded 'throne' provided for me, with backdrop, and a floppy summer hat to wear. As I said, we started with a few fairly fast poses, a 'dancing' sequence again, but none of them could really get to grips with that style of working. I told them that some tutors I worked for asked for two minute and one minute poses, and they visibly winced.
The first long pose was set for me - on the throne, legs together and sideways on, with hat and loose hair. In the break they asked me what I'd like to suggest for another pose. I sat sideways with one leg by my chin, looking pensive. 'Yes, wonderful!' they enthused, so I was too easily encouraged to hold a pose that I knew after five minutes was going to be a nightmare. This is when my stoicism kicks in.
They're a nice group, in a very nice tiny hall in a very nice small village. But definitely no street cred allowed.

Aching for Britain

2007-04-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

It's after 10pm on Tuesday and I'm aching. It might have something to do with the gym session this morning, but it's more likely to be tonight's life modelling session. After last night's life modelling session. It's a busy week.
Yesterday was one of my obscure village hall jobs - cash in hand so most welcome, and always an interesting bunch of usually retired village-dwellers. I've 'sat' at this venue, and for this group, before, but they've lost their tutor and are going it alone now. So I had one person phoning me to make sure I was coming, another person bringing the props, and a third arranging and timing the poses. There were 10 artists signed up and paid, but one or two couldn't make it this week.
We agreed that I would do a few ten minute poses 'to warm them up', followed by a longer one until the break, and an hour-long pose after that. It was sweet and easy. No probs. Basically I could do whatever I felt comfortable with and they were all most appreciative.
I was so chuffed I gave the son an extra fiver for sister-minding beyond the call of duty (all weekend, plus Monday and Tuesday evenings... even though I'd had a few panicked phone calls from her over the weekend when he was late back and it was dark).
But tonight was a different story. It was the inspirational tutor running her evening class - I called her 'inspirational' on the basis of her work with the Adult Art Foundation course, but I have to say she does very little actual teaching on a Tuesday evening, confining herself to sitting at the back of the room and occasionally wandering round to whisper a little to a student or two.
This evening we started with a couple of five minute poses, then it was onto a (hard, unpadded) table for a long sitting pose, 'with a break every half an hour' she promised. As soon as they'd started I knew I would regret the pose I'd assumed. And I did. It was one of those stoic evenings when I just had to count my breaths and watch the clock and wait for it all to be over.
Eventually it was. I remembered to ask for directions to my new group this Friday, the chap who'd booked me was a student at this one, and the tutor did at least praise me at the end for how still I'd been right through. Yes, I pride myself on keeping still - it's what I thought the job was about, after all.
I nearly forgot to mention all the little bunny rabbits nibbling the roadside verges on the way there, early evening. Makes me happy, that sort of thing.

City Break

2007-04-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

Friday morning and back to the college, for a new group. This is the tutor I've had once or twice before, the one who knows my traveller friend - I've decided to call him 'helpful tutor', because he is.
When I arrived he was in a bit of a panic because he'd just been given some garbled message about the life model not coming in. Did I phone the college last night, he asked? No, not me. I'm here.
The helpful tutor tries to anticipate everyone's needs. He asks me if I'm warm enough every half hour or so. He asks me if I'd like a break to stretch. He lays out all the oil paints in tins in the middle of the floor and ensures each student has all the colours he or she needs on their palettes. He goes round the room handing out paper towels.
There were 12 students for the first half of the session, a few of them from last term's group wanting extra life drawing practice - including the eccentric painter, who was sitting on the floor sketching this time - but mainly the new group, who were painting with oils. The tutor went round opening windows and giving short breaks because of fumes from the white spirit. We started with a half hour pose, sitting on a (padded) plastic chair leaning my arm on a table and head in hand... this continued for another twenty-five minutes up to the break, as I'd suspected it would - oils take longer than half an hour I've already learnt. And after the break - the same pose again, as two students who hadn't finished their paintings came back. One was his daughter. There were five new students for the second session, and four who returned from the earlier one.
Oh, and he did bring me a very nice coffee too. We chatted about a number of things, from travelling in Australia and New Zealand to the state of the FE sector. Seems he's still studying for his PGCE, but had done a number of other jobs before, including running his own painting and decorating business.
On the way home I saw a magpie harassing a pheasant in a tree, and three hawks circling over a hedgerow.
I was keen to get home in time as I had a lot to do and a quick turn-around before... going to London for the weekend! It must be at least fifteen years since I've ventured to the big smoke, and I was not expecting to enjoy it. But strangely I did. It was a writing expedition, staying with an old friend and working on a fantasy novel that three of us are attempting to write together. She lives in Bonnington Square in Vauxhall, a hippy haven right in the middle of the city complete with cheap and superb vegetarian cafe and community gardens. On Saturday before starting work we all went for a walk along the river to see the sights, and called in at the Tate Britain for a few minutes. Long enough for me to discover Basil Beattie. So on Sunday I snuck back there for a blissful hour while my friends were enjoying the spring sunshine and doing their community gardening rota. Ahhhh - Jacob Epstein... John Piper... Turner! Wow, what a revolutionary Turner was. And just as I was leaving to meet them for lunch I was pulled into the the room with the huge Stanley Spencer picture, the Resurrection. Amazing. I could stare at it for hours.
I'm so pleased I've rediscovered the joys of visiting famous Art Galleries in cities. Can't wait to go back.

Spring weather

2007-04-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Good to get back to work on this glorious sunny April morning after a two week Easter break. And it was back to work with a bang today - or is that a crunch? When I arrived at the college all the students were set up ready and the talkative tutor showed me a series of sketches he'd just been showing them. Lots of difficult short poses, basically. The other tutor (earrings man) didn't actually say very much all session, at least not to me; it looked like he'd asked talkative tutor to help him out with this rowdy class and how to deal with a naked woman too.
So it was up on the grubby table at the front of the room again, and leaning to one side for the first pose. The five minutes he'd promised me turned into ten as the tutor demonstrated techniques first, but I managed all right. The next pose was 'starting blocks', which gets a bit painful on the knee after a few minutes, rapidly followed by 'throwing a hand grenade', and a twisted leaning standing one - and so it went on.
The students were working with felt pen on large sheets of paper, several poses to a sheet, no detail at all. Simply catching the pose - 'this is how Manga artists work' they were told.
I had to endure several uncomplimentary comments, such as comparing my tummy and bum to a kidney bean on its side, and references to 'no bumpy bits today'. When we'd run out of his sketches I had to improvise whatever weird poses I could come up with, the more unusual the better he said. Makes them look more, makes for better drawings.
At least the teenagers got tired before me! They were moaning about how hard he was working them this morning, and it was with some relief that he declared the last pose. I was using my dressing gown for padding by this point, as he'd introduced a hard plastic chair to the set-up, and also asked for one with me perched on the edge of a filing cabinet (still on the grubby table though). Ho hum, makes up for all the times when I just sit and gaze into space for an hour I suppose.
The drive back was glorious, and the car was pleasingly warm. The hut had been unheated today. I noticed quite a lot of May blossom out already and the first pink buds of apple blossom about to open. A very early Spring round here.

Avoidance techniques

2007-04-01T04:05:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday morning and I'm avoiding writing my novel again. Thought I'd better catch up on last week's work, Easter hols have started now so no new posts for a fortnight after this.
I was totally knackered after my Barcelona weekend, could sleep for England, only just fully recovered now. Comes of being middle-aged I suppose!
I'm away visiting family over Easter, then onto a friend on Exmoor to hear about her travel adventures, and finally a writing weekend in London. Scary. I've not been to the big smoke for many a year, being a country girl myself...
I have work bookings all through April and May, but nothing in June so far. The college work is tailing off now, so it's down to a few private groups. I could do with an artist booking me up for several sessions, or some more proofreading work, or even getting paid to do summer festivals. I usually get a performer's ticket to two or three, with a community choir, but I haven't worked as 'crew' for many a year.
Anyway, back to the modelling work. On Thursday I was back at the college with the usual group, but a different tutor. I'll call him earrings man. The talkative tutor was there part of the time to help him out on his first session teaching this group - it was a bit of a shambles to start with. There were 14 students in the room, and not enough easels or drawing boards. Mr earrings wasn't quite sure what to do with me either. Finally they were all set up with lines of sight and charcoal and chalk and paper and masking tape, and I was posed on the edge of a table with my legs at an angle resting on a bench - and that was it for an hour and a half. Earrings man gave individual help where required, the talkative tutor dropped in and out to keep an eye on proceedings, and I just got colder and stiffer as usual.
After the session earrings man asked me if they were always this rowdy. I told him they were better behaved today than most weeks. At least there was no rubber-chucking or charcoal face-painting this session.
Friday was rainy. I drove over in drizzle and as expected, was asked for same pose as the day before. Talkative tutor seems to run out of imagination by Fridays. I varied it a bit by sitting with my knees at the opposite angle - for another hour and a half, with one stretch. There were six students today, it was their last session with me and they were basically left to their own devices. One used a fineline pen, three used charcoal and chalk, and two were painting. When I checked out the results at break time the paintings were the most interesting, but the least anatomically correct.
Gazing out of the window again, I watched a shower of silver drops falling by the window, perhaps a squirrel passing on a branch overhead. Later the sun came out and multicoloured drops winked at me from every branch. A bluetit perched momentarily on a twig by the window. The two squirrels passed by again, accompanied by a rather worried-looking male blackbird.
I mused on the nature of beauty, and the strange propensity of this furless primate to appreciate it, and to want to create it. Wandering on in my thoughts to creativity in general, I decided that one day I'd like to write poetry in Spanish. I'm not sure if that'll be before or after I take an Art Foundation course and study music composition.
Talkative tutor suggested either the same pose or something 'wild and interesting' for after the break - so of course I opted for the latter. I opened out the grubby mattress, laid my robe over it and tried out a few of my scrunched-up supine poses. 'Yes!' declared the eccentric painter. Oh dear, I thought, I'm going to regret this arm flung over my head. Never mind.
Forty-five minutes went quite fast with my eyes closed, and the tutor remarked that these were much better than their earlier efforts, probably because the odd angles and unusual viewpoints made them really look.
I had a chat with the eccentric painter after the session, about my desire to paint and the advantages of working on hardboard rather than canvas (mainly cost - £1 as opposed to £20). He said he'd like to do lots more Life Drawing - nice to have a fan - and I told him I was just off to check at admin when they might want me for next term.
Amid the usual chaos we managed to sort out some dates for me and I filled in new forms (as I'd forgotten to bring mine) so as to get them in before the Easter break. Just enough time left for a bowl of thick leek and potato soup at the canteen before the afternoon's photography session.
One of the girls wanted to do some big paintings for her end of term project, and was interested in bodies and body parts. I think. So she'd brought a digital camera to capture lots of different poses from different angles. I dutifully curled up foetally, stretched out limbs, twisted back and shoulders to her requirements against a backdrop of black sugar paper, with the lights angled by an attentive tutor. I gave thanks for my previous yoga experience, and decided I'd like to come to their end of year show.
'Oh yes,' said the tutor.'You'll be much in evidence.'
Better not bring the kids then.

So, back to the novel. I promised myself and my appointed slave-driver that I'd do another thousand words by the end of today. Bugger. I really do go to great lengths to avoid writing. Perhaps I should see it as an enjoyable and self-indulgent pastime resorted to in private... I'm sure I'd get far more done.

The Sea at Barcelona

2007-03-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

THE SEA AT BARCELONA

It was worth coming just to see the sea.
Just to see the deep turquoise shining with silver
in early spring sunshine.

It was almost worth coming just to see the
turquoise, orange, green, yellow, red, purple and blue
walls and shutters and folding doors of the hostel,
the surprise of patterned walls opposite our window in the morning.

It was well worth coming to experience Miro, to feel the
infinite sadness of a missing yellow, to almost weep before
simple lines and splotches of colour, to wonder and laugh with
dolls arms and feet and hanging gloves all rendered in bronze.

And to know that this is me,
that I am here, responding to
iconic trees, painted tiles, graffiti,
washing hung from balconies.

And then there was the man gesticulating into his
mobile phone while occasionally remembering to push his
young daughter on her stabilisered bicycle
up the wooden decking towards us,
with the sea on both sides and the sun overhead.

And this.
Just all of it.
Just
being in Barcelona.

Barcelona-bound

2007-03-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

Just got time to fill you in on this week's work before jetting off to Barcelona... it's all art-related of course, so maybe I could count it as a legitimate business expense? Only joking.
So, Tuesday saw a new group but with an existing tutor - the inspirational one. I had to find a different building, but my directions got me to the door and the Reception very well and on time. Unfortunately there was no-one on Reception at that time in the evening, and I had no idea which room the class was in.
Eventually a passing artist with half-eaten plastic-wrapped sandwich in hand, took pity on me and escorted me down stairs and through double doors, endlessly and repeatedly it seemed, until we finally found a blue-floored white-painted aggressively-strip-lighted room in the bowels of the earth, where a group of people were setting up easels.
I was shown into the store room to change. It was markedly colder in there. I was taken to the tables at the front as soon as I stepped out, with a request that one of the students would like to take pictures of my back, if that was OK?
Fine. I assumed a curled up posture facing away from the camera on the hard table top (thoughtfully and tastefully decorated with a curtain, but no padding), but realised after a few flashes that the tutor was assuming I'd started and would stay still for the next hour... I broke my own rule and moved, just to get more comfortable for a long session.
Several of the students - a mixed bunch aged from twenties to well-retired - were working with a scratch crayon technique, whereby they have already covered a sheet of paper with crayon, dark shades over light, and they 'etch' the figure with sharp pointy tools. However this didn't seem to be compulsory, and one lad sat on the floor doing pencil sketches the whole way through.
The first pose, curled up with back view, was for half an hour, followed by a standing pose for twenty five minutes, then a break. A gentleman came up to introduce himself, he'd booked me for a different group later on in the year.
After the break I did a sitting pose on the edge of the table for almost an hour, with one stretch partway through. A fairly boring evening's work really. The tutor did very little too, sitting in a matching pose at the back of the room looking exhausted and letting them get on with it. Must have been a long day - I know she teaches the other group at 9.30 in the morning.
Mind you, I was half way through my gym routine at that time.
Thursday was Botticelli day. The village hall group were in the kitchen again, musing over their research material and early morning cups of coffee. They established that he used a very white tone and stylised poses and figures, and apparently I needed to put on at least a stone in weight - oh, and grow my hair down to the floor. They posed me as the famous 'Venus' painting, using a yellow sheet to stand in for the rather coy hairstyle - at least some parts of me were kept warm. One imaginative artist even managed a good approximation of a clam shell beneath my feet.
The evening session was warmer, at least. We covered much the same ground but with fewer and less confident students, and the tutor let me sit down for the second pose this time. Both sessions had begun with the ritual 'warm-up' poses of five to ten minutes each, drawing, but after that they were into paints of various sorts - watercolour, acrylic, or oils depending on taste or budget.
This morning was back to the college and a darkened room. All the lights were off and I was posed on a plastic chair set up on a table next to the window, looking out of it. The aim was to produce soft, smudgy, back-lit pictures. I stared at the overgrown bank and the busy road below. I noted hazel, elder and ivy, two squirrels, an orangey-brown wren and three other birds which looked like chaffinch, bluetit and dunnock, but they were moving quite fast. One ambulance passed by with sirens wailing, and a silver sports car parked in the only remaining space on the side of the road. A youngish woman got out. I ignored the rest of the traffic, but my old traveller's eye identified the standing dead wood and the angle of snap required to extricate it from the rest of the undergrowth.
The room was full of students and although I couldn't observe any of them directly, I was aware of their interactions behind me. The tutor made the rather flimsy floor shake each time he walked past the table. After the coffee break, during which I turned the heater on to 'high', I did a mirror image of the same pose, so as to get a matching crick on the other side of my neck. This time I observed a fluffy robin with blazing breast, who sat on a twig and watched me curiously for a while, and the return of one squirrel. The silver sports car drove off again.
I was particularly keen to get home early today, and was hoping there would be no work again this afternoon. I did ask about whether I'd be needed after the Easter break, and was told they'd look into it, but probably, almost definitely in fact. Finally I got my answer - next week there is a student who would like to use me for the afternoon session, for a particular project, but this week - I was free to go. Yay! Barcelona, here I come...

Lying down on the job

2007-03-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I thought I was late when I arrived at the college on Friday morning, but the room was empty apart from the tutor. He had arranged a sun lounger mattress on top of two tables of slightly different heights, and at an angle to the rest of the room. Which end did he want my head, I wondered? I looked round the room. The floor was in a worse state than my teenager's bedroom. They don't seem to get round to much cleaning or maintenance in these huts, maybe because they are building a new (state-of-the) Art Department.
I changed, the students dribbled in, and I took up the agreed pose - head towards them, lying on my back, one knee up and the other crossed behind it.
'It's more like a landscape than a body,' they were told. 'Look at all the hills and ridges behind each other.'
The first hour was quite manageable. I had a little stretch. The next half hour left me cold and in some discomfort, but then it was break time. The students left, the tutor went off after offering me a coffee, and I learned how to turn the heating up.
Students trickled back, complaining about how hot the room was now, agreeing to meet up in the pub at lunchtime, and joking about whose 'dentist appointment' was going to result in shorter hair. The second pose was the opposite way round, feet towards them, so I curled up on my front with a half twist and closed my eyes for the next forty minutes. Part way through a girl left for her dentist appointment.
The pictures were good, I have to say. Several different styles and approaches, but definitely some good results for their portfolios. The tutor has been asking them all about their plans, applications and interviews for a while now. They seem to be going on to all sorts of courses from Archaeology and Animation to - well, probably not Zoology.
Lunchtime. I was assured that the trainee tutor was taking a group this afternoon, and that there would indeed be work for me this week. I sat in the staff hut eating my multi-grain bagel and salted nuts, reading this week's novel, and let the gossip wash over me. At one o'clock I went back to the life model hut, which was empty, and sat there reading for another half hour until the morning's tutor showed up again.
'I don't know what's happened to him,' he said. 'He was supposed to have an assessment today as well.' He treated me to a long moan about the present and future of Further and Higher Education, then told me that I might as well go home. Again.
At least my daughter is happy to see me, unexpectedly, every Friday as she struggles out of school with her games kit and guitar. And her immediate demands for money, food or friends round to play.

Modigliani and hats

2007-03-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning, thick mist when I left the house, becoming hazy sunshine across the Levels with thick shadows of willow trees across the road. Rooks were nesting, lambs giving suck, two swans lay at their ease in a field and bunches of mistletoe dangled profusely from every poplar tree.
When I arrived at the large and cold village hall, the artists were in the kitchen revving up with coffee and looking at pictures by and articles about Modigliani. They admired my outfit, chosen especially - oh, very French, love the beret, we'll use that. I even took a silky lilac dressing gown printed with sprigs of cherry blossom, which they allowed me to keep on for the first two five-minute poses until the room warmed up a little.
So, Modigliani - long necks and faces, stylised eyes, demure poses. Orangey skin hues.
'They all look miserable,' observed one artist.
'Bored,' said another.
'I think they're serene.'
OK, OK, I'll do my best.
I settled onto a chair in a demure pose with drapes behind me and my hair piled into a loose bun on top of my head, and looked at a distant telegraph pole for nearly an hour with what I hoped was a suitably miserable, bored and serene expression, chin lifted to give the longest neck I could comfortable manage for that length of time. I watched the sun alternate with shadow. I watched rooks and starlings settle and fly off, distinguishable only by the size of the black blobs and how they flew. Thrillingly, I watched a swan fly past, wings flashing grey and white and the longest neck you could imagine. Finally it was time for the break, coffee and little flapjacks. I had a peek at their work. Some astonishing interpretations and use of colour. The tutor told me that they'd been very resistant initially to copying the style of well-known artists, but that their art was progressing in leaps and bounds and now they enjoyed the process.
I was pleased that I hadn't modelled for the Egon Schiele week. Next time it's Botticelli. I'd better eat cream cakes and chocolate all week then.
The second half of the session I looked the other way so I could get a matching crick in my neck, and I wore the black beret against a white background. Nothing else. I didn't think those ones worked so well. And to finish off, a couple more short poses, standing. The music was nice, sounded like Handel, Baroque certainly. Good for musing to.
The evening session was with the same tutor but a different group, location and for Adult Learning and Leisure (ie lots of forms to fill in). The hut was closed up and dark when I arrived and the students sat in a line of cars outside, waiting. Finally the tutor drew up full of apologies and tales of a slow bus on country lanes that she'd been stuck behind. When we opened up the room there was a distinct and most unpleasant smell of fish, which I traced to an empty mackerel tin in the waste bin. I removed all the rubbish to a wheelie bin outside and we wafted the door as long as possible. Good job the weather's mild.
The music this evening was a CD of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, to my delight, except that it was a live version and there was distracting applause at the end of each track. Apart from that, it was a repeat of the morning's session, but with only five students, who had rather less of an idea of what Modigliani painted. I took a different hat, and the tutor brought one too, so the two long poses had dark or light backdrops and light or dark hats. There was a wide variety and standard of painting produced, but I could certainly see the improvement from when they first started.
Drove home through light drizzle and managed a shower before falling into bed. Another full day at the college tomorrow.

Village life with wrinkles

2007-03-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

My son managed to buckle the back wheel of his new bike over the weekend, I found him wheeling it home this morning after he decided it wasn't up to the trip to college. So being an accommodating sort of mum I took him there in the car, went straight on to today's village hall which was in the same direction, and arrived half an hour early. I sat in the car with my eyes closed and listened to the birds. Lots of rooks, an insistent peeping, and about four or five other calls at odd intervals. Totally quiet apart from birdsong. I suppose that's one reason people like to live in villages.
Another reason was evidenced by the 'Millennium Quilt' which took up the whole of one wall inside the hall. Forty two patches individually worked by 'ladies of the village', of an astonishing variety of styles and themes, but all depicting aspects of contemporary life in the village.
People often run late on Monday mornings, unlike myself, and the artists were still arriving partway into the first pose. We did a series of five minute warm-up poses showing 'dynamism', ie twists and gestures, followed by a fifteen minute seated pose on a stool, and a half hour until the break, also seated. The artists do a lot of moving around in this class, looking for better angles, which often involves moving easels, tables, chairs, other people's equipment etc. Reminds me of the choir I sing with, where we move between parts for each song.
There were a few faces I recognised from other groups - one said we're doing Modigliani on Thursday, that'll be fun; another booked me conditionally for some portrait classes she hopes to run, while taking names and contacts of anyone else who might want to come to it. This was the last teaching session for the tutor/organiser and she was presented with several bottles of fine wine and some orchids in a pot by the grateful regulars. I was introduced to the person who would be taking over, who will no doubt be contacting me with bookings in the next few weeks.
In the break (coffee and two chocolate digestives, not the healthiest breakfast) I discovered that there was another model there, who models for the same group and gets two classes of tuition free, instead of payment. We discussed the annoyances of working for colleges with endless forms to fill in, and agreed that we both like these informal groups best.
The second half was a long repeat of the earlier pose, while people moved around me and complained that they were not on form today, and a twenty minute one in a different pose but still on the stool. No serious aches and pains this session.
I prefer to be posing for groups where the average age is 'retired' - I suspect I was the youngest person in the room - they consider me to be young and fit, as opposed to the students who have that 'yuck, she's the same age as my mum' reaction in the back of their minds. The other model (who was also considerably older than me) said that her grand-daughter is studying Art and complains about the life modelling sessions: 'they're always wrinkly old men'.
Well, I'm not wrinkly yet, except when I smile. And they love my skin tone too. Somewhere between skimmed milk and cream, depending on the light.
I brought home one of the five-minute sketches for my personal portfolio. When I AM old and wrinkly, I'll be able to show my own grandchildren what I looked like, way back before they were born.

Reading a book - bliss

2007-03-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

On Friday I wore the same outfit as Thursday, expecting that the tutor would have something similar in mind for the other group. I was right. But no mask and no lampshades. This time I kept the jaunty hat on instead. 'You can read a newspaper if you want,' he informed me. Ah, I don't have a newspaper, but I do have a book that I brought to read in my lunch-break. Yes, that was fine.
I sat on the plastic chair on the low table reading my book about travelling in Ladakh with a Tibetan healer, while occasionally glancing around the room. There were originally only two students, joined by a third before the break. 'Plenty of room!' said the tutor. 'Go where you want, choose the best easels.'
He told me the others were probably finishing assignments, then we were joined by the tutor from next door introducing three or four of her students who were studying fashion and would like the chance to draw a clothed model. Except that one of them left soon after, grumbling that what she'd really wanted was a naked torso.... can't win 'em all.
So a happy morning was spent by yours truly, being paid to do what I love the most, except that I wasn't allowed to change my position. The back of the chair was digging into me after a while, but it was manageable.
I did try to check at the start of the lunch-break whether I was required afterwards, but no-one seemed to know. I was told that this was entirely normal. I'm glad I don't work as a teacher, especially after encountering another one in a state of great stress after losing her keys. I ate my lunch in the staff hut, went to the LRC to read the Guardian, and strolled back to the life model hut around one o'clock. Two other tutors were there discussing tables for the textiles group. No sign of my allotted tutor or his class. I wandered back and forth for a while between there and the staff room, no-one could locate him and eventually I was told to go home.
'Don't worry, you'll be paid for it.'
Worried? Moi?

After two weeks at the college fully clothed it'll come as a bit of a shock on Monday morning when I'm back to an obscure village hall for two and a half hours. But hey - never a dull moment. I thrive on variety.

Great work if you can get it

2007-03-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

Getting dressed this morning I decided to go flamboyant. The wide pink-and-lilac camouflage pants, a black shirt with laces up the sleeves, black fringed scarf, long black coat and jaunty hat. Plus the new shades. My kids sighed and said, 'where are you going?'
I answered, 'to work'.
As I arrived the tutor was leading the C&G group from 'their' hut to the life model hut. He was delighted when he saw what I was wearing. 'Perfect!' he said. 'Do you have any objections to wearing a Venetian mask?'
Well, let me see.... do I have any objections to wearing a Venetian mask? Bit of a rhetorical question, really.
They were working on pattern today, line drawings with pencil. I sat on a chair on a low table, fully clothed and wearing a mask - and surrounded by seven large and tasteless lampshades.
I love this job.
The mask was painted gold, with gold trim all around it and tiny orange spotted feathers forming a delicate outer trim. Then the whole lot overlaid with large red and black feathers curving outwards. Wow. It did squash my nose a little and I was afraid I was going to sneeze, but apart from that the morning was a doddle.
I even enjoyed the supermarket shopping afterwards. Maybe that's the key - dress up to do mundane tasks. I might give it a try.

Public Transport?

2007-03-02T06:21:00.000-08:00

Thursday and Friday are college days, as usual. I arrive for the City and Guilds class on Thursday morning, to find that today I am not expected to take my clothes off. In fact, I have to put more on. The tutor has kindly brought me a colourful scarf, a hat with ear muffs, a large umbrella, a rolled up newspaper and two carrier bags. Today I am supposed to be waiting at a bus stop, and they are doing a large drawing of me, with smaller details at the side and notes as to colours, to do a painting for their portfolio at a later date.
I duly climb onto the table and wait for a bus for an hour and a half. It never comes. I go home.
Friday morning I arrive to see - oh look, the same props, but for a different group. Seven of the Art Foundation students are waiting to draw me - the first pose standing up, same as before, and the second will be sitting down, he says. I look in the other direction today, just in case I was standing on the wrong side of the road yesterday. Still no bus.
In the break I go over to the tutors' hut - being fully clothed for once - and make my own coffee. I hand in my claims sheet for last month and engage in a lengthy chat with the administrator about her flu. I go back to the room, and the tutor tells me they haven't finished their drawings yet, although they're coming along nicely, so do I mind standing again, please.
Does it matter if I mind?
Oh well, I suppose most people would be glad if they were paid for buses that never arrived. That was nearly three hours waiting today.
At lunchtime he tells me I'll be with the other tutor this afternoon, but when I come back at one o'clock the other tutor says his class is doing something different, already arranged. So it's back to the staff hut to hang around in the hope, or threat, that someone else may be wanting my services. They don't. I come home early.
I think the county council could do something about improving the bus service though.

Back to work

2007-02-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

Great to get back to work today after a week off, despite the grey drizzle. I need to use my time constructively when I'm in one of my spaced out and 'distant' states, as I so often am.
Lots of little black or grey lambs in the pastures, more ploughed fields. White blackthorn and pink flowering cherry. Primroses in my back garden. Spring keeps coming earlier.
So this morning was the Adult Foundation Course at the college, and they were doing portraits. It was an easy session for me. The first twenty minutes or so they were copying muscle structure from anatomy hand-outs so I had nothing to do except chat with the tutor and sit on the radiator, until it got too hot. Then I sat on a big cushion on a table staring at a black mark on the opposite wall, for half an hour, trying to smile with my cheek muscles not my mouth (it's very difficult to keep a smile with your mouth for long, the muscles get so tired and droop. I learnt to raise the cheek muscles and 'smile with the eyes' while singing, it's a very useful technique for Eastern European and Georgian songs, in particular. Alters the resonance).
I didn't manage to get any writing done during half term, as I'd planned. My daughter was in a show all week, and in-between taking her there and helping out front-of-house I just relaxed. So yesterday I started actually writing my novel, and promptly slid into a mini-depression. It will be a triumph of self-help psychology if I ever get it finished.
After the break, our students had a demonstration on how to work with gouache. There are 'hot' colours and 'cold' colours, and the hot ones need to be daubed on first before layering colder ones over the top. I loved the names - cadmium, prussian blue, cerulean. They remind me of a set of Lakeland coloured pencils I had as a child with magical names - burnt umber, burnt sienna, crimson. Back to the original pose for me as they started painting over their pencil line drawings, with constant help and advice from the tutor. At the end they all had to turn their pictures round, unfinished in most cases, for appraisal.
I do like working with this group. They are mainly mature women, of varying standards and experience, and they give me hope and inspiration.
On the way home I called in on a friend who was printing out a story for me - my printer is currently non-functional - and I posted it off to a competition. The deadline is tomorrow...
This evening I had the Adult Learning and Leisure group again. The previous one had been cancelled, and only eight people turned up for this session, one of them half way through after bad traffic on a motorway somewhere. Their brief was to work on sight-size drawings this week - strict measurement with rulers, drawing me exactly the same size as I appeared from their various viewpoints. The tutor set them an experiment to start with, to do two drawing, one in charcoal and one in pencil, whatever size they wanted to. The aim was to see whether they drew larger in charcoal than pencil (some did, but not all), and how much larger than sight-size they usually worked. When they'd done those they had to measure and do a calculation as to the difference - most of the sight-size drawings would be half or a third of their normal ones. The evening ended with some titchy little fairy drawings of me sprawled on a mat for forty minutes.
Not sure if my aching shoulder muscles are due to the modelling, yesterday's gym session, or so much driving. Probably a combination of all three. I must book another massage.

charcoal and chalk

2007-02-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

A lovely quiet week. My Tuesday session was cancelled at lunchtime with a phone call saying that the tutor was off sick, so all I had was an hour and a half on Thursday at the college.
It was sunny for the second day running. Felt like Spring. The City and Guilds class were starting to feel like individuals at last, after being an amorphous mass of blue jeans for weeks. This session they had to work in charcoal and chalk, as they needed two charcoal drawings for their portfolios. They started by covering the whole paper with charcoal, then worked with a rubber to reveal the paper underneath, trying to make the drawing look 3D with tone and adding chalk for the highlights.
The first pose was head only, nice and easy for half an hour, could even keep my dressing gown and slippers on. The second pose was down to my waist for nearly an hour, which could have been very boring except that the students kept me amused with their horseplay. Charcoal is very messy stuff, and they took full advantage of the fact. I could see who was smudging whose face and attacking each other with long black lines, even if the tutor's back was turned. Several of them were sent off to the toilets to wash at various times.
They all finished before the end of the session, and even though they were supposed to come back with their sketch books and use the last ten minutes or so usefully, they seemed to take rather a long time in cleaning up, and eventually the tutor gave up and told me I could finish. He also confided that he hated charcoal as a medium.
Well, that's the last modelling work for over a week as it's half term round here, so I suppose I'd better get on with my writing. I made a good start on Friday with three hours researching at the local paper, and I have to admit to writing a few new poems recently... but that's another story.
Will be back when I have more to report.

February fill-dyke

2007-02-11T04:30:00.000-08:00

Heavy snowfall across all of Britain, schools closed, chaos on the railways. It was raining here. I drove to the college past newly-ploughed fields to find that ten of the young group of students had made it - nine of them in straight-leg blue jeans and trainers again.
This week they were working on tone. The room was quite cold, and I was given a plastic chair to sit on. I padded it with any available fabric, and was allowed to keep my slippers on and the bottom half of my dressing gown draped over my legs. Light from above, looking to my right, for one hour. Followed by light from below and looking to my left for half an hour. Very boring session. Apart from noting the tutor's remarks about how the nose is like a ski slope and the chin is a tangerine stuck on below the lower lip.
On Thursday evening I had a full body massage at home from a friend of mine, aaaah, much-needed and totally blissful. Unfortunately my shoulders were then gently aching all night from the tension she'd released and I found it hard to sleep.
Friday morning was more heavy rain. I noted three soggy newborns in the lambing field on the way to work. As expected, the Foundation Course students were still recovering from their North Africa trip, and not one made it into college that day. I was handed over to the other tutor I've been talking with, but his students seemed reluctant to turn up on a Friday morning too. We started the session late, with only three of them up to the break, and as their previous model couldn't or wouldn't do standing poses, he asked me to do those please, leaning on the wall or a table. A very gentle taskmaster this one, kept asking me if I was OK for another ten minutes, didn't work me hard at all. My shoulders felt better after leaning on a wall for half an hour, at least, and I was able to think about my forthcoming visit to the archives of the local paper for research - next Friday, as the college have a training day.
This tutor is much less talkative than the other, but does seem to have a good relationship with his students. He was showing them sketches and pictures by Pierre Bonnard (I wrote the name down this time so I wouldn't forget), and plenty more of them turned up after the break - thirteen in total. A very mixed and interesting group to observe. They had a variety of hair styles (long, scruffy pony tail, dyed, bleached, streaked, shaved), jeans in black and even white as well as blue, sometimes frayed and holed. There were more colours too, and even a tartan short skirt and Goth eye-liner - definitely my sort of teenagers. And they had their very own Eccentric Painter too, with a box full of paints and a habit of muttering and producing odd and interesting pictures. Must be an archetype then.
The second part was a repeat of the half hour standing pose, leaning on the wall, followed by half an hour sitting down. All quite easy and relaxed for me, although my sitting pose may have been difficult for them to draw.
At half past eleven this lot went off to some other artistic endeavour, and another class was filed in. They'd been noisy and disruptive next door for most of the morning, and I think the tutors reckoned that exposing them to their first ever life model might shock them into silence. They were right. Such a young bunch, some of them seemed only half formed to me. I stared out of the window to avoid embarrassing them further by catching their eye, and observed the first dangling catkins of the year.

inspiration and hedgerows

2007-02-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

I had a comment from Julie on a previous post, asking me why I did this work when I was obviously worth far more than they paid me. I suppose the short answer is that I don't count my worth in monetary terms - and therefore nor does the rest of the world. I made a decision when I became 'self-employed' that I would only do work I enjoyed, or else what was the point of it? I consider myself to have an excellent quality of life, although on a low income, and I've always valued time, love and creativity over anything I could 'buy'.
Tuesday's session at the college was one of those that makes me remember why I love this job - despite my on-line whinges. It was the Adult's Art Foundation course, 10 of them in a lovely warm room despite the frost outside. The tutor was aiming to get them to take risks this week, to focus on process rather than outcome, and they'd all been instructed to turn up with a few twigs. Yes, just twigs from the nearest hedgerow. They used broken twigs, thick brushes, and thinned paint (later with ink too) to 'agitate the surface' of their paper with a rough wash, adding line with the ends or sides of the twigs, with flicks of paint too. A messy business, but it looked like great fun, and they produced some astonishing results.
They were told to exaggerate features, use caricature really, and although none of the results were strict drawings of me, they captured an energy, an essence, which would otherwise have been lacking. One of my favourites had me resembling a woodland sprite, with huge eyes, pointy chin and a mass of wild hair. In another I seemed to be a serene Madonna figure.
I choose my own pose in this class - the tutor tells me how long it's for and whether what I adopt is suitable - and it usually is. So for fifteen minutes at a time I could think about my novel in peace, working in my head on the first section, what life would be like for the main character and who else I would need to contact for background information. The students had to write in their own journals before the break, which gave me chance to jot down my ideas before I lost them. They were asked how they'd found the process, what did it make them feel (some loved it and some hated it). One even commented on how quickly she became attached to the stick she'd been using.
Apparently this method is leading towards oil painting, which they will be trying out in a future session. Something to do with layers, and wanting to put back the white and paler tones. I couldn't quite follow the reasoning myself, but she seems to be an inspirational tutor and I'm sure she knows what she's doing.
I was left alone in the room while they all went off for their break, so I enjoyed looking at their efforts while nibbling on some almonds and figs - my version of fast food. The tutor had offered me coffee from the staff room, but in fact it was another tutor who brought it, the one I'd talked to about travellers in the 80's. He wanted to know if I was free that afternoon as his model had just phoned in sick. No, sorry. But we had a good chat again.
After the break they were given orange ink to add to the mix. The black painty bits were to indicate the tone, and the orange ink the highlights, where the light fell on me. Wow, wild. But don't get any on your clothes... I did actually break my own rule and moved to indicate to an Artist that her pot of ink had just been knocked over and was in danger of staining the (already very messy) carpet...
The session ended with a sort of pep talk from the tutor, about how their Foundation course is supposed to be an adventure (one I'd like to take one day, perhaps), and how she was introducing them to an Expressionist mode of working, rather than Realist, which gave them more choices as an artist. Also that it was a very exciting time to be in art, they were on the cusp of a change, back towards more emphasis on life modelling from the Post-Modernist era - that Conceptualism may be a dying concept.
I don't know about her students, but I find her pretty inspiring. It's great to be a part of all this, albeit in a minor sort of Muse-like way.

Unbalanced, as ever

2007-02-03T04:22:00.000-08:00

I've actually ended the week with some energy left over, for a change. Probably because I only did two modelling jobs this week, at the college.
Thursday was a delight - I didn't even have to take my clothes off. They were studying hands and feet, so I just rolled my sleeves up and set to work, holding a variety of props. A mug, a bottle of juice and a rolled-up paper tube later they were definitely improving. The poses were supposed to be five minutes each, but all stretched to at least ten, and fifteen if he was doing a demonstration first. It was the talkative tutor again. I have to say he really knows his stuff, though.
I had plenty of time to observe the students as they were observing me, and came to the conclusion that they were remarkably conventional for Art students. Out of eight lads and four girls, ten of them were wearing blue jeans, ten of them were wearing trainers, of which six were a grubby white. All eight boys had short hair, six with ears fully exposed, and even the shaggier two were definitely styled. Gel was much in evidence. All four girls had shoulder-length or longer hair. They even threw rubbers (erasers) across the room to each other, and kept asking the tutor to have their pencils sharpened.
The last fifteen minutes of the class were for feet, and I had to stand on the table again, trousers rolled up, but mercifully with socks left on. My feet are not the prettiest part of me.
At the end of the session we went through my diary and he booked me for several more weeks, running right up until Easter. At least my pay arrived on Friday, but for less than I'd expected. I'll have to claim the tax back sometime.
On Friday I arrived a little late due to an accident on the main road, two ambulances there as I crawled past in the queue. Makes a change from counting dead badgers though.
The eccentric painter had been banished from the hut to prime his board - the metallic gold paint he was using featured a skull and crossbones on the tin, and was apparently poisoning the entire class with fumes. Most of the others were working with chalk on black paper today.
The first pose was to stand (on the table again) with one leg behind the other, and leaning forward onto a stool with straight arms, looking up so they could catch a profile too. He wanted them to look for shapes, the rectangle formed by my arms, how my head was set between my shoulders, for example. I reckoned it was a ten minute pose, and told him so - he gave me a break after ten minutes (more like 15 as usual) then I carried on. It was 35 altogether.
The second pose was longer and he wanted another unbalanced one, weight on one leg and leaning on the stool. 'Look for the centre line,' he'd say. 'Look at that hip, pushed right out.' Hmm. I carefully arranged myself so the weight was on three points and I could subtly shift between them to keep the blood flowing and ease my muscles. What I hadn't accounted for was the unexpected strain on the hand (and arm and shoulder) that was on my hip.
The students were so keen to keep working that they refused a break at ten o'clock, going straight into the second pose. We did persuade them to leave the room around half ten though, and I was brought my most reviving coffee. I didn't have any sort of coffee habit before I started working here. While the tutor was absent I did overhear one of the students complaining that he talked all the time and she preferred to work in silence. Ah, I thought, maybe that's why I haven't been 'working' on the novel too, no silence in which to space out?
I am a bit concerned that I'm not working more, or faster, on this. So far I've contacted the local paper to do some research on 'traveller' stories - I need to make an appointment, but unfortunately only for Thursdays or Fridays... which is when I'm working. I'm also managing to miss catching the county's gypsy liaison officer, who is out of his office every time I phone, and doesn't seem to like email. I need to contact midwives and teachers too. And fill in a time-line for the events in the plot. Maybe next week...
The afternoon's session was quiet, as usual. My 'regulars' returned -the painter, the one who talks to me, and another - plus a new girl. The tutor seemed to have run out of steam a bit, he was noticeably quieter this afternoon, apart from a discourse on the techniques and interesting private lives of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and the eccentricities of a rich and famous American painter of the 20th Century (I hadn't heard of him before, and have forgotten his name already. Sorry).
All the Art Foundation students are off on a 'field trip' to North Africa for a few days before next week's session. They were abuzz with anxieties and excitement all day - exchange rates, spiders and snakes etc. I just wish they had the funds to take their own life model too.
Never mind. I've booked a weekend break in Barcelona with an artist friend who needs to get away from her young children. Yes! Travel at last. Scary stuff. Just what I need.

the wonders of technology

2007-01-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's Tuesday morning and I've spent an enjoyable hour or so learning how to move photos around on Bluetooth and how to add them to my blog. They didn't come up quite as I was expecting - I thought they'd be in the space on the left hand side next to the text, and I also thought they'd have their little labels with them so you'd know what you were looking at. But anyway,we're getting somewhere. A big Thank You to P, one of my most consistent readers I think, for technical help. (Poor chap thought he might get lots of pics of me with nothing on - ahem, sorry, no).
I didn't add all the pics I'd taken, it only seems to allow 5 for any one post. Next time I'll use my digital camera (and hope the son hasn't lost its connection cable again), and think about where it'll appear on the page, maybe write the text to take that into account.
I was thinking too about the generational difference in playing with techno-toys. When I was young, anything vaguely technologically complicated or advanced was strictly 'hands off, don't touch'. I did quite enjoy finding out how to use different phone and laptop functions, and I still learn fast, but I seem to need someone to show me, and a reason to learn. I never just play with things. An early conditioning, I suspect. Whereas now, my 10 year old knows how to do more things than I do simply because she plays with them all the time. She's allowed to.
I was a little worried that this blog is taking up lots of my writing time and that 'therefore' I'm not working on the novel, but a writer and editor friend of mine said blogging is really good, it exercises the 'writing muscle'. That's OK, I'll carry on then.
Some good news on the writing front - I've been asked to produce a regular contribution to a friend's on-line magazine (quarterly, and unpaid, she's very sorry); and I'm due to organise a poetry event in our town during May as part of our (very new) Arts Festival. I'm going to a meeting about it tomorrow. Also more poetry things early next week but I'll tell you about them as they happen.
My only modelling work this week is Thursday morning and all day Friday. A nice quiet week then.

Small world

2007-01-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

Two more sessions at the college. On Thursday morning I had a group of 13 sixteen year olds with the talkative tutor. They needed a lot more actual teaching and supervision than the older group, and it was one long pose for the whole session. I didn't realise this when I started. Yes, of course I can do 'weight on one leg, opposite hand on hip'. Even while perched up on a table with lights on me from below. No thanks, I don't need a long cardboard tube to lean on.
Half an hour later I asked for a break, and a 2 minute stretch. It got harder after that. The next break, half an hour later again, was more of a serious 'ow' stretch. And there was still another half an hour to go. Oh dear.
I was walking with a slight limp for the rest of the day.
Friday was the all day session. He wanted me to do another long standing pose. I told him I wasn't doing 'weight on one leg' again - no, no, that was OK, just 'standing at a bus-stop' would be fine. So I stood at a bus-stop on top of a table, lit from below, for a very long time again.
The idea was to work from a hand-out he'd produced about a Degas sketch, looking at the shading and tone, and as if lit by footlights on a Parisian stage at the fin de siecle - look at Toulouse-Lautrec posters, they were told. He pointed out all the brightest areas on me, where they wouldn't normally be, and the darkest shadows.
After an hour of this we all had a break. There was no young tutor to buy me coffee this week, due apparently to the presence of an Inspector-type woman who was sitting in on the class. She was inspecting the whole Art and Design section, I was told. I watched her taking notes and wandering around the class to see what they were producing. She looked like a creature from another world - smart suit, full face make-up, shoes that weren't made for walking in. She seemed pleased with what she saw, at least.
There were 11 students to start with. After the break it had dwindled to 7, and by the end of the morning there were only 3 left. Maybe they were as bored waiting for the bus as I was. Yes, another hour and a bit of it. I know rural services are pretty dire, but this was ridiculous. I'm gradually learning that I only get a break if I manage to catch the tutor's eye or ear, which is not always very easy. It seems I must learn to be a bit pushier about my own comfort.
I was feeling quite faint by lunchtime, perhaps because of the fumes from the oil painter standing near me. I really needed a hot lunch this week. And then I insisted on a sitting pose for the afternoon.
Had some interaction with a couple of the students again. The oil painter really stands out from the rest - not least because he always wears a paint-stained blue coverall, carries his pots of paint around and sets them all out carefully before he begins, and throws his arms about and mutters to himself while producing particularly original creations. We were chatting at the start of the afternoon session, when no-one else had turned up, about what he wanted to do next, study-wise. He wasn't sure whether to go for painting or sculpture, but thought probably a sculpture course 'because you can paint anywhere, but you need all the facilities for sculpture'.
I expect him to be famous in 20 years.
I did notice that the lad who'd been told to 'look at women' all week hadn't come back. Presumably he'd found some better specimens than me then. Or his girlfriend had put her foot down.
Another one, the one who started chatting to me last week, was waiting for me after I'd got changed at the end of the session. Had I said I was a writer, he wanted to know? Yes. What was I writing?
Ah, OK. I did mention the blog, but quickly moved on to my projected novel (which was a cheat really, because I'm not actively writing it yet). Oh, New Age Travellers, I should speak to X, one of his tutors, they'd had some good talks about that and he'd watched the film about the Battle of the Beanfield too. A few minutes later that tutor just happened to walk into the room looking for something else. So we got talking, found friends in common from 1986, you know how it goes...
And there was me getting worried that I wasn't 'working on my novel' enough.

Does my bum look big from down there?

2007-01-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

Wednesday evening, after another day at the shop - stock-taking all day. The youngest has been an absolute pain since we got home, deliberately trying to wind up self and her brother with stupid comments and arguments, but at last she's gone to watch TV quietly in her room. The son is still not well, coughing like a good 'un, but determined to catch the train to Kent again this weekend to see his girlfriend.
Last night was difficult - I was working 6-8pm, which meant I had to leave the house at 5.15 and wouldn't be back until 8.45, and he was going to a computer nerd meeting, being picked up sometime around 7pm. I tried to get a neighbour's teenager to come over and sit with the youngest until I was home, but she was out herself until 9pm...
I don't like leaving her alone. She doesn't like it either. Even though I know we have lots of neighbours she could go to if she needed to. At least that's the last Tuesday evening I'm doing for a couple of weeks. Must organise 'sitters' with more notice next time. And she WAS fine, in bed watching TV when I got back. But still. It's not easy, being a single mum and trying to work - as any of them will attest.
This was the 'dancing' tutor, and I wondered what she had up her sleeve for this week's session... oh dear, 4 tables pushed together in the middle of the room and the 'donkeys' set up all round them. Yes, it's '3-point perspective' week, they have to draw me from a low viewpoint as if I were a tower block, which meant I was standing on the tables being looked up at for 45 minutes - not the most flattering of views, and imperative that one doesn't fart....
They were working in pencil, and a lot of rubbing out was in evidence. At the break I just couldn't resist the line which had been running through my head for almost half an hour - 'does my bum look big in this?'
Anyway, apart from Art, most of the conversation was about the weather - what's new? - it being suddenly very cold. One chap had encountered ice on his way over. The tutor had kindly brought an extra heater for the room, although it was hardly needed as the radiators seemed set to blast out heat from 7pm onwards - the time the rest of the evening classes start. It was particularly cold going from the staff toilet, where I change, through 2 sets of doors and along an outside covered walkway to the art room. Never mind. That's another £16 or so earned. Provided I get all the paperwork in on time, I'll see it by the end of February.
Oh yes, nearly forgot my good news. I was 'feeling in character' this morning - putting myself in the head of one of the characters from my novel (which I haven't been working on) and feeling what she would feel. I thought that was a very positive sign.

Recovery

2007-01-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

It's Monday, and I've just about recovered from last week's work. Today I met a couple of friends for lunch, and one of them used to model too 'for very prestigious art establishments, darling', only giving it up 4 years ago because she was getting too stiff to sit for longer than half an hour. She's one of those older women who I take as role models, hoping I'll have at least half their energy and verve by the time I'm their age.
I mentioned the tutor who spoke about curves so enthusiastically, and she told me that she'd walked out of a class at the Slade (was it?) because she considered the tutor had insulted her, referring to her body as 'not the classical female form' and going on to make various derogatory comments which I won't repeat here.
Anyway, she told me to put her in my blog, so I have done.
I have come to the conclusion that 5 hours modelling is equivalent to a hard day's work. So last week I did 2 1/2 day's hard work, another day in the shop, 2 gym sessions, a choir rehearsal (for singing in the cathedral this week), wrote a 1000 word short story, and ran a writer's group. And I'm in recovery from Chronic Fatigue/Clinical Depression... no wonder I was so knackered.
Today I've done bugger all, to be honest. A low-energy gym session. Cleaned the house to the minumum standard (think - 'writer'). Checked the emails and replied to one. Finished the draft of the previous post and wrote this one. Erm - that's about it. No work on the novel today, to my embarrassment and dismay.
Maybe I'll find some form this evening.
The party on Saturday was very good though. I just wish the birthday girls had told a few more people that it was fancy dress...
And I did try very hard yesterday to transfer my photos from the phone. But it won't allow me to access the email function, and my laptop doesn't do Bluetooth, and my daughter whose phone does both (so could transfer them for me) lives in Bristol and won't be visiting for a while. So you'll just have to wait a bit longer for images. Sorry.

a hard week

2007-01-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, really stiff and aching today. It was a hard week, but hopefully next week will be easier - only 3 modelling jobs instead of 4 which I've done now for 2 weeks. And at least it's Saturday and I could sleep in - before taking the cat to the vet's for her booster immunisations. Going to a neighbour's party tonight and the youngest is having a sleepover at a friend's - for a change. Usually they come here.
Thursday was one of the 'obscure village halls' jobs. This particular one is very large - and therefore generally very cold. The tutor brings a fan heater for me, but it's often not enough. At least it's not been frosty this winter - I remember going there last January and even the students were getting concerned about me - one of them popped home in the break to bring an extra heater because she couldn't bear watching me turn blue. But again, it's another of my favourite tutors - and this one is cash in hand, which is always handy.
The weather was wild rather than cold - blustery rain sweeping across the Levels, and high winds. I later read that 10 people had been killed by the storms, but the worst we got was a creaking wooden roof and noisy rain at the windows. The windows in that hall are fairly high up, but I could see the tops of the trees shaking around and the next rain squall heading our way.
About 9 artists made it through the weather, some arriving late, most of them I knew as regulars because I've sat for that group many times now. The session followed its normal course - several quick poses to 'warm them up', then some longer ones before the coffee break. They bring their own equipment and materials to this class - it's fun to watch them struggling with or showing off various different types of easels. There's one chap who leans his sketchbook on a chair perched on top of a table - it slid off this week, knocking his coffee everywhere. I took a photo of easels in the break, and some to show the size of the hall. You might even get to see them soon. Depends on what state I'm in tomorrow after the party...
And Friday was all day at the college again. That's where the aching muscles come from. The tutors here prepare work sheets for their students, with examples of other artists' work - then they ask me to take the same poses as the ones on the sheet. Well, the 'standing up with arms over head' ones were 5 minutes each, that was OK. It was also the first time these students had to work quickly, and after 3 of these it was obvious that they were finding it quite challenging. So it was back to 45-minute poses for me. Crunched up in a ball on a table. I did ask for a break half-way through to stretch, but still... one or two of those might be acceptable, but I had to come back after lunch and repeat the morning's class for a new set of students...
Fortunately for me, only 2 new students turned up, and 2 who had already done the morning's session (why do students not feel like turning up for classes on a Friday afternoon, I wonder?). Incidentally, the morning's class was the direct inversion of the gender spread of Tuesday's - if you follow me - consisting of 9 lads and 2 girls.
For the final poses of the day the (trainee) tutor took pity on me and let me sit in a more-or-less normal fashion on the end of the table. He even draped me with fabric over one arm, to give them even more of a challenge - I'm sure it wasn't just to keep me warm anyway. They were working with oil pastels this week, choosing 2 colours for contrasting tone, and the ones who returned for the afternoon session were even allowed to add more colours to their 'palette'.
I'm getting to know them a little now, recognising faces and even managing to remember a name or two (part of my brain doesn't function very well, the bit that connects names and faces, usually I'll manage one or the other but not both together). Can't remember the name of the one who was bold enough to engage me in conversation during the morning break though... but he came back in the afternoon. The other lad who came back was admonished by the talkative tutor for making me too thin - 'women have curves,' he said. 'That's why artists like to draw women. Look at all those lovely curves! Exaggerate them, even. Your homework for this week is to look at women, and if you get into trouble, tell them you're an artist!' I don't know what the lad's girlfriend, who's in the same class, made of this though. But maybe I should stop worrying so much about the extra pounds I've put on this winter - artists appreciate them, even if I don't.

not always keeping still

2007-01-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

Sooo tired... two jobs yesterday - 5 hours work and nearly 3 hours travelling, with a gym workout inbetween. So today I'm aching, plus I've been having trouble getting to sleep. Today I was working at my other job for 8 hours too - then, being a single mum, I have to fit the shopping into my lunchbreak, and do the washing up and cook dinner and sort the laundry when I get home.
But I didn't start writing this to complain. It was quite an interesting day yesterday, actually. I saw a newborn lamb on my way to the first job, tiny and still wobbly on its feet. That was a good start. When I arrived - this was at the college again - I parked out on the road a little way up (there's never any room in the college car parks), behind an elderly gentleman. I had to move my car forward so he could get into his boot to retrieve a couple of bags. We then set off walking in the same direction.
I went to the hut and met the new tutor, realised this was a course for Adults, not teenagers, and that one of the students was someone I used to write with a few years ago. As I was early I went over to the office to pick up some claim forms, and met the elderly gentleman again. Ah, I thought, maybe he's an Art student. But no - it turned out he was another life model and there was some confusion in the bookings. I almost never meet other models - it's not in the nature of the job, really - and this was an awkward situation in which to meet, but eventually he seemed to agree with the flustered tutor that he was working for her that evening, and off he went. I wonder if I'll still be doing this job at his age - wow, a scary but interesting thought.
There was a table set up in the centre of the room and the easels all round, and my first 'assignment' was to walk around it and lean on it facing in various directions, for 10 minute poses. The students were studying the anatomy of the upper body, how the rib cage and shoulders move independently of each other. I thought all them were pretty good, and it was a surprise to learn that this was only their second life session. Equally, the tutor seemed very pleased with my work - she commented 'good poses' by my 3rd - and the students agreed that I was remarkably still, 'still on the inside too, like you're meditating'. I generally am...
Of course not working with other models, I have no-one to compare myself with (or should that be 'to'?)(Usually I'm pretty good at grammar, courtesy of my schoolteacher mother who insisted on correct speech at all times).
Ah, that's better, just had a long hot bath after getting the youngest into bed. Yes, the students were appreciative, except for the one I used to know who told the tutor she had great difficulty looking at me because she knows me. It wasn't a problem for me at all, but then I'm used to it.
In the break I decided to take some pictures with my phone, just in case I ever learnt how to add them to this blog. I spent about ten minutes not managing to find the camera option, to my embarrassment - that shows my age, eh? - and had to ask the young lad when he came back in from having a quick fag. There were 8 students in this class, ranging in age from early twenties to sixties at a guess - and he was the only male. So having been shown that the button on the side (the one with a camera icon, surprisingly) was the short cut to the camera, I took a few photos. You'll have to wait for them though. First I have to find out how to email them to my computer...
The second 'half' was a couple of longer poses, and I finished ten minutes early so the tutor could give a quick teaching session on shading and tone. They were working in charcoal on buff sugar-paper, mainly.
Drove home in the rain, but by the time I'd had some brunch (I try to eat very little when I'm posing, purely for reasons of vanity) the sun was out at last. I was yawning, and had to choose between catching an hour's nap before the school run, or going to the gym for my 2nd workout of the week. It was my only chance, I'm busy every other day. I knew that if I slept I'd only feel worse, and the sun gave me a burst of energy - it was quite a serious work-out, motivated by the reading on the scales the day before...
OK, got the kids home, fed them, made myself a sandwich to take for after and a handful of dates for the journey, and I was off again. This was an adult learning evening class, the furthest I go. The traffic was slow and I only just arrived in time - a 45 minute drive, nearly all at 40mph in long queues, which is unusual for these roads - but at least I'd remembered to bring the jingly scarves. They were imitating an artist who drew Malaysian dancers, in wash and line (Degas? oops, not sure, names don't stick in my mind very well). The tutor had brought a jar of cold tea in for anyone who'd forgotten watercolours. She had apparently done Arab-Egyptian dance herself for a couple of years, and had floaty scarves and veils of her own to use as props. And boy, did she work her students hard - not to mention me.
Lots of short poses to start with, in dance positions (as best as I could attempt them, anyway), first with the line followed by wash, then the wash followed by line - and after the break she wanted me to move continually, actually dancing in slow motion, so they could fill a page with as many little figures as they could catch.
I don't like dancing naked in front of a room full of people all watching me intently. Sitting, standing or lying still is fine. I'm good at that. But actually dancing - well, it's not my strong point. I have no dance training - and I know people who have, and I know the difference. Not to mention that it was even more tiring than usual and at the end of a long day. Oh well, it's a good job she's one of my favourite tutors. I forgive her.

lifemodel-uk

2007-01-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

An odd thing to do for a living, perhaps. People react in different ways when I tell them. Most say, 'Oh, I couldn't do that!' Then they proceed to tell me that they can't sit still for long. Some people say, 'Oh, I used to do that - when I was a student. But I wouldn't do it now. Not got the body for it any more.'
So what makes a 46 year old woman with 3 children drive around the countryside in search of random groups of strangers in obscure village halls - and stand naked in front of them for 2 hours?
Well, it's interesting. I learn a lot about art. And to be honest, I always was good at sitting still doing nothing - as my mother would attest, were she still alive. I've finally found a way to be paid for it. And apparently I'm a very good model. I keep getting more work - to the point where I could almost call it my day job, if it didn't involve so many evenings....
It also gives me chance to muse, to meditate, to follow my own creative thoughts. You see, I'm a writer too. I'm working on my 1st novel. OK, to be honest, my 2nd attempt at a 1st novel. I've used my life-modelling experiences so far in one (published) short story, 2 (published) articles, and 2 (published or performed) poems. I currently use my long poses to work on inventing characters for this projected novel, working out their back-story and pondering how they will interact. While using yoga techniques and counting breaths to get through the sometimes extreme discomfort.
So - today I did a day's work at a local college, for the Art Foundation course. That means Young Adults, all in their teens I reckon - makes a change from posing for pensioners anyway. Fortunately I'm not looking to be flattered in their various renditions of my face and body. I'm perfectly at home in it and reckon I'm in pretty good shape for my age. Yes, I do work-out at a gym. The Life Model classes take place in a run-down prefab hut. The first time I was there it was raining and there was a constant slow drip onto the carpet in the middle of the floor. The window-frames are rotten and I get changed in a tiny cubicle at the back of the room constructed from 2 pieces of hardboard. There are 2 tutors- one who talks a lot, and one who is still in training. Today I had the one in training. He's sweet - buys me a coffee at break-time because I can hardly trot across the campus in a woolly dressing gown and leopard-print mule slippers to get one myself...
The first pose today involved leaning forward on a plastic chair set on top of a desk, with both arms on my knees and head slightly raised. Try it. See how long you can hold it without moving. I did 45 minutes. It hurt. It'll still hurt tomorrow. Fortunately after that he allowed me to take an easier sitting-upright position for the rest of the day. Because they are all learning and this is their first experience drawing a model from life, and they are working for a portfolio, the poses tend to be long. In most other groups and classes I sit for they are shorter - say, a series of ten-minute poses to warm up, then maybe half an hour at a time before a break. Some tutors like to challenge their learners with one- and two-minute poses, 'get the essence, which are the most necessary lines, do a drawing in 15 brush-strokes'. Then I can get really creative - poses on one leg, for example, or ones with my arms flung out in dramatic gestures.
I like the company of teens, but I can't work for the nearest college because my son goes there. Most of my work is about 20 miles away, although some of the occasional 'private' classes (ie not Adult Learning and Leisure) are closer- in obscure village halls, as I said. I like the driving really, but it does take time off my day. And means that my basic rate of pay works out pretty low. My dream job is to work privately for an artist (or two) who's working towards an exhibition, has a warm airy studio with pleasant music playing, pays me at least £15/hour, and is willing to collaborate with me on a joint exhibition/poetry performance...
The reality can be £45 for a day's work, which is hardly better than my other job- minimum wage in retail. I only accept that particular one because I get a lift there and back and a free lunch, it's cash in hand and the artists themselves are so appreciative. When I work for assorted educational establishments I get paid by bank transfer at the end of the next month, and have to fill in lots of forms to get it. It's still under £10/hour, which is what I aim for generally. I'm hoping my work from December will pay for my next year's car tax, at least.
Underpaid but thoroughly appreciated, that's me. Good thing I value creative activity over retail therapy then.