I remembered the feedback book this time. I'm still disappointed that I forgot it at the previous class, but at least I got my fix of ego stroking this time around. I need the pictures of the book for this blog. After all, the photographs of happy, smiling clients having a great time is not going to convince anyone, unless I also include these handwritten testimonials.
This group of girls also brought another great prop along to this class. A large pair of comedy glasses that I used repeatedly. Then, for a recurring theme, I got the winner of every competition to put the glasses on as well, when she posed for her victory picture with me. A nice little extra touch.
I made a comment about looking a bit like Timmy Mallett, but that comment only got blank, uncomprehending stares. I don't think any of them understood the reference. All of them just a little bit too young for that. Made me feel old. And past my prime.
There was some amazing drawing in this group. I couldn't believe how amazing a lot of the pictures were and I had a really tough job picking my favourites out of every challenge. But two of my favourite pictures even seemed to have a connection. One of them looked like a character from South Park and one looked like (it was Alison who spotted this) Stewie Griffin from Family Guy. They genuinely are some of the funniest and best pictures I've seen in a long, long time.
The Make-A-Giant-Man pose was just as much fun as always, despite some of the girls getting their senses of direction a little confused - a couple of them found it hard to tell the difference between left and right. This meant that I was given two right arms and two left feet - which was surprising apt. We fixed the arm situation by turning one of the - the puny one - upside down. The right arm was more powerful than the left one - and again, that was surprisingly appropriate. How many single men can't say that, though?
Alison got the girls to stand on the steps and hold up their pictures to make the giant man and we got a couple of pictures of that. But afterwards, we decided it was more fun for me to lie down on the floor and for the girls to lay their pictures on top of me, so we could see what that looked like. It came out looking pretty cool.
I can't remember who came up with the idea of me standing with my arms stretched right out to either side, but it was the toughest pose of this class. And while I was standing like that, we got talking about how actual genuine life modelling - for an actual genuine art class - was a lot tougher than these hen nights. Alison said that models often had to stand still for up to an hour, but I pointed out that it was even longer than that. When I worked as a life model (and I still do that occasionally, just to remind myself how easy these classes are) I would routinely have to maintain a pose for seven hours at a time, with only an hour halfway through the day so the students could get something to eat. Beyond that, models are allowed the occasional ten or twenty minute break. One time, when I worked at Gray's School of Art at Aberdeen, I had to keep returning to the same pose for five days. Actual genuine life modelling can really be an exercise in pain. And this pose reminded me of that. Towards the end of it, Alison pointed out that my arms had started to sag and asked me if they had a minute left in them. "More like thirty seconds," I said. I managed to last that thirty seconds, but only just barely.
Alison must have taken pity on me after that last pose, though. Because the next one was easy. We moved four chairs into position and I lay across them, propped up on one arm. Very occasionally, in an actual genuine art class, I would get a pose where there was no pain and where I'd be so relaxed that I might even doze off. This wasn't one of those poses, but it could have been like that if I hadn't been propped up. It definitely was a lot easier than the last one, though.
This pose was the Work-Collaboratively challenge - and I really need to come up with a better name for that one. It's the one where the girls are put together into small groups and all of them have to collaborate on the same picture. At regular intervals Alison would tell them to change and they'd pass their pads to the person next to them and keep working. The fun thing about that kind of challenge is hearing some of the girls occasionally claim that the person they'd just changed with had already drawn their favourite bit.
Since these pictures were collaborative efforts, the points were shared out among those who drew the winning picture. And when they came up for their victory photograph, two of them held the picture. Normally it's me who holds it and unless otherwise directed, I tend to hold it strategically to create a PG version. This time, the girls held it higher, though, so for that one it was more of an 18 certificate.
Once again, we took to the steps at the back of the room for the group shot at the end of the class. I think we used to struggle to think of the best location for these pictures, then when we first used those steps, it just became blindingly obvious - and I couldn't figure out why we'd never used them before. I think we got a decent set of happy, smiling faces for it, though. So I'm going to make a bit of an assumption and guess that it was another contented group.
Once again, Alison and I had a great time. I love this job. It barely qualifies as "work".
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