Any Guys Here do Life Modelling?

[ExpertInAbsolutelyZero]

I’m asking because I do it and tonight’s session was very different from the usual, with lots of very short poses. That was a challenge for the artists to draw something meaningful and for me to come up with poses every 30 seconds or so.

Not a model but one of the artists
The short poses are an excellent way to learn how to present the essence of a pose

A really good way to become better at life drawing

That's what last night's session leader said and the artists agreed and had great fun keeping up.

It’s great people like you are prepared to strip off for art!
I couldn’t do it. Much happier behind the easel.
🙏

Not sure this is a topic for mumsnet.

Why not?! I’m sure there are plenty of people on here who are interested in art, including life drawing

caramac04

Not sure this is a topic for mumsnet.

Anything’s a topic for mumsnet! Better than the sniping on aibu!!

Sounds more like showing off and the question was directed at ‘guys’.

Yes!

I only modelled about a million years ago in my student years, and I don't remember doing poses any shorter than ten minutes, but I can see that very quick poses are a good challenge for the artists. For the model, it is a different kind of challenge. Less fighting to stay immobile, or issues with stiffness, but more imagination needed to come up with new poses every 30 seconds.

Teachers usually tell them what to do.
Ours usually slowly walk around the room stopping every step with a different pose

Nothing to show off about in it, though. There's a huge variety of body types. It certainly doesn't mean you're unusually good-looking, or hung like a stallion or anything. The most popular male life model back when I was doing it was a stick thin man in his 70s.

I worked as an artists model in quite a few different places and they all did short poses sometimes.

I found it made a real change from the longer ones so it was fun as the model.

It's very similar to just sitting outside somewhere and drawing passers by, where you are capturing the pose more than trying to draw that person.
You also get poses that it's hard to hold for more than a few moments which tend to be more natural than the ones you can zen out in for an hour.

Sculpting classes were my least favourite because they wanted the same pose once a week for a couple of hours for months and it got really boring.

Definitely not showing off, it can be hard work keeping a long pose, and that needs concentration. And I posted in Dadsnet, hence “guys”. Though everyone is free to comment as they see fit.

I commented as I saw fit. You have dadsnet. Clearly you want comments from mums as you have posted on mumsnet.

He posted on the Dadsnet topic. You would imagine it would be directed at men.

He posted on dadsnet

It’s just a thread about life drawing, perhaps he just wanted a chat
Isn't that what most people are doing on mumsnet

I've done Life Drawing classes for years - it's a wonderful way to improve any artist's observational/anatomical/compositional/formal skills. It worked in the Renaissance...

Absolutely, short poses (leading up to longer medium and longer poses) are what helps in leading an evening class into a satisfyingly complete lesson.

Here's a page from a series of short poses from one of my favourite life models (his day job was in the social services). I know Mumsnet (not sure about Dadsnet) isn't keen on pics, but hey! I'd love to see other artistes' sketches. (Fingers crossed the pictures get through. I chose the least explicit ones I had.)

So he didn’t post on mumsnet?

He posted on the dadsnet part of the overarching website. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand. You're looking for trouble where there is none.

Well I didn’t know about the overarching website. I thought mumsnet was for mums and dadsnet was for dads. Obviously people might be either sex on either site and it wouldn’t be obvious.
Might as well have one site called parentsnet.
Sorry for my ignorance, genuinely thought the clue was in the name.
I’m off to bed, sleep well all.

Mumsnet isn’t even really parents net either as not all people are parents and don’t have to be

Apart from the posts about who should be responding to this, I have done life drawing for years. On the other hand, I’m not a dad and I’m not even a man.

30 short poses does sound a lot. We normally do about half a dozen at the beginning of the class to loosen up.

The class I’m in at the moment has a different model each week, which is fantastic. I did get fed up with classes where we had the same model for a whole term.

I do think that the teacher should probably have told you in advance that so many different poses were going to be needed.

On the other hand, perhaps they did not all need to be very different from each other. What you could do is perhaps work your way up from the floor to sitting to standing, which would give you around three or four poses at each level and then work your way back down again? Remember that from the point of view of the person drawing, in a class, people do appreciate being able to draw a different aspect of the model, so you could rotate as well. That would mean that with the same pose, you’d give someone a different view with different challenges such as foreshortening, even if you were using the same pose several times.

Also, it’s useful to incorporate a prop, such as a chair or a large pole to lean against or hold across your shoulders, et cetera, et cetera.

@HoppityBun it was a new pose every 30 seconds for about 10 minutes in total, so about 20 all in. I didn’t use props for them, but used a chair for a 20 minute pose, resting against the back of it. Then a reclining pose for the long one, which gave the artists dome challenges in foreshortening 😃. That’s what they told me, I’m not really up on the terminology.

The life class I did started with short poses to warm up, but not as many as 30. I had done drawing classes before,but not a life class. I found it interesting, that I was literally objectifying the model, seeing them as an object, shapes and shadows. It was also interesting seeing what everyone else produced - obviously some people had a different view, being spread round the room, but one guy focussed on the folded knees rather than the whole body, and another was clearly practising feet.

I know what you mean, I hardly recognised myself in some of the drawings. There was a wide range from almost photographic to the very abstract. For the longer poses, obviously.

The Mumsnet logo says By Parents for Parents. This section is called Dad's net. How on earth could you think it is only for mums?