Figure modeling

So I worked a figure modeling gig for a local college the other day. Figure modeling is kind of fun even though it's not as glam as photographic modeling. No one does your makeup or your hair, but then again, you don't have to shave your legs because no one is going to bother drawing leg hair.

I got really used to modeling for advanced classes and artists' practice so it was unusual for me to do shorter poses. I'm used to doing 90 second gestures* for ten minutes and then picking a pose to hold for 45 minutes at once for five hours in total. It was super strange to do five and two minute gestures and 20 and 30 minute poses.

My best friend Ester went to art school. She told this really great story about her two best/worst subjects. Both were men, one was this big fat homeless guy. The fact that they hire homeless people to art model makes me feel less great about myself as an art model.

You know? It's like when you're dating someone and you're feeling pretty good about yourself for landing this great catch and then you meet a few of their exes and they're all total hose beasts. You kind of wonder what part of you is beastly enough to attract your sig to you and now you kind of view the whole situation differently.

Anyway, so this homeless art model, according to Ester, was a little smelly and sort of wove back and forth if he had to sit up straight. He would always pick spread legged poses to display his junk better and if he caught you looking at it to draw it he'd make eyebrows at you and then during the break he'd walk over to you and execute one of my favorite "annoying man tricks". A nude (or nearly so) man walks over to a woman who is sitting with her eyes at his groin level and then does a lower back stretch to shove his genitals in her face. "Ohhhhh, don't mind me... Ahhhh, my back is soooo tight. Could uuuuuuuse a good massage."

Ester tells me it was particularly offensive when this guy did it because he always smelled of old ball sweat.

The other guy is nowhere near as generally appalling, just kind of strange. He would get an erection if you tried to draw his penis. She would tell me that you'd start to draw and he'd catch you looking and his dick would start twitching. It is, by the way, impossible to draw a twitching member (yeah duh). She would drop her pencil and look at his face with a look withering look that said, "seriously. Cut it out. I'm trying to draw here." which would make him more embarrassed, he'd blush crimson and his erection would get worse.

In the beginning the professor would ask the model to excuse himself until he, "calmed down" but apparently this happened so many times a class that if the model excused himself every time he got hard there would be no more drawing time left. Ester's sketch book of this class is pretty funny. It starts as guys with missing crotches and then guys with half drawn flaccid penises and then guys with huge raging hard ons. It looks like someone is trying to tell a story about male sexuality. I picture people in the future finding her sketch book in the ruins of a town and it being the next cave paintings, "You see how our ancestors' grasp on sexuality changed over the ages...these at the last appear to be some kind of ancient fertility gods."

I don't understand why the guy didn't just stare at the ceiling like I do. In a modeling class I get very well acquainted with the students shoes and the water spots on the ceiling. Everyone in this last class was wearing sneakers, by the way. Except the professor, who was wearing loafers...they always are.

Here are some things I think about while standing still for three hours;

-What would happen if I just broke out into an impromptu dance for like, 20 seconds and then went back to my pose like nothing ever happened?

-What would happen if I just got up and walked out, naked, didn't pick up my clothing or anything?

-I should just stare at this one person. That would be really funny. To just stare an inch or so beyond his head, I bet that would make him really uncomfortable. I bet he'd move.

-I wonder if there has ever been a super stinky model who figure modeled. I bet you they didn't work with that person again.

-What would the professor do if their figure model showed up and had palsy?

-What if I just cut a really loud fart right now? Would people laugh?

-Why do people react so negatively if their art model talks to them while they're drawing? I guess it gets in the way of the objectification.

I also think of other things like what I need to do for the rest of the week and how I would want to look if I were black (I have always wanted to have "nappy" hair) and what I would do to the world if I were God (thing 5.7b is making a birth control pill for men) but I just listed the things specific to figure modeling and not say, a long trip on the bus....or a flight when the person in front of me reclines their seat so far that I can't use my laptop.

I purposefully pick the shitty seats in the back of the plane b/c they generally have fewer degrees of seat pitch. Seriously, if I wanted a fellow passenger's head in my lap during the whole trip I'm sure I could ask someone and have it achieved in a much more interesting manner. And no one ever asks you if they can recline before they hit the lever. Most people don't even look back. I've had that little tray latch hit the top of my laptop with such force that I thought it would break my screen.

Guilty confession? Once, in the middle of a particularly stressful cross country flight (why does everyone bring their babies on the red eye?!) a little old -well, okay, not so little- a morbidly obese old Texan lady just dropped her seat back into my lap with such force that the seat latch closed my laptop on my hands. Startled and angry I shouted -honestly, I shouted, in the middle of a crowded plane at like, midnight- "Woah! Eat less cake lady!"

*laughs and blushes*

Everyone looked up. EVERYONE. I woke people up. They had NO idea why I was shouting. The old lady was startled and offended because she didn't know that she'd almost broken my laptop. She just knew she'd reclined and I'd yelled that she was fat. I didn't feel like explaining why I'd yelled. I was embarrassed, she was embarrassed, the other passengers thought I was a douche...some people laughed though. I think I mumbled, "you shut my laptop, it startled me." She eyed me, wounded, through the seats, cranked her seat up, and went back to sleep.

Yep. that's what I've got to say today.

Thanks for watching,
Isobel

*gesture - a quick, dynamic pose where the artist merely works on capturing the form of the model in as few lines as possible. The viewer of the finished gesture piece should be able to "fill in" the figure with their eyes and be left with a sense of movement in the drawing, hence gesture.