Hummingbird

In which Ragna has her second class

and the willy warmer is brought back out of retirement.

Sometimes a class will take a fair bit of forethought and co-ordination before it gets underway.  The girl who booked me for this one definitely had some clear ideas on her choice of venue and I was happy to try to incorporate her suggestions.  The first one - sadly - was completely unworkable.

It was a place called November, on the top floor of the Princes Mall, in Glasgow.  I was aware of it, because I'd had drinks in there before, back when it was called October.  So I wasn't sure of how appropriate it would be.  I went through to Glasgow to check it out, though, in case there was a room that I'd been unaware of.   But no... nothing that work.

The second suggestion was Hummingbird.  And that's a venue I'd happily use again and again, if I could afford to do so.  It was almost perfect.  A beautiful room in a beautiful building.  Right at the top of the building, with skylights and everything.  The only problem was the heat.  I was naked and it was almost too warm for me, so it must have been pretty tough on everybody else.  Thankfully there were fans available.

I met the girl who booked me, early in the day.  She had arranged a cocktail making class at the same venue, so that was where the co-ordination needed to be taken care of.  I got in at around 12PM and set down the sketchpads, props and charcoal, then we had a quick conversation about the layout of the room.  We moved a couch round and agreed that all the equipment could be kept out of the way until everyone was settled down.

A late addition to this particular class was a mask of the bride's fiancé.  I was asked if I could wear that for a short period, right at the beginning.

So, after that, I had a couple of hours going spare.  I walked around Glasgow for a bit, then returned to Hummingbird and sat downstairs to wait for Ragna.  When she arrived, I quickly went over the theme of the event and then we sat around and relaxed, while we waited for everything to start up.    I noticed right away, that she seemed a lot more confident this time.  The first class had been a good introduction for her, so now she had an idea of what to anticipate, she was more ready to have a bit of fun with it.  Which was lucky, because she was about to get a lot more responsibility this time.

Then we went upstairs.  I went into the gents and stripped off, while Ragna went into the room and introduced herself to the girl who had booked us.  Later, she came through with the mask, we spent a couple of minutes discussing the layout and our strategy, then finally we kicked it off.

She settled the girls down, introduced herself and told the class that they were going to be doing some life-drawing - and the model was going to be the bride's fiancé.  Then she fetched me and led me into the room.

I'm very glad I had Ragna with me, for this class, because I was throwing a lot of things her way and a couple of times I worried that I might be overwhelming her a bit.  There were a lot of girls in a relatively small space, so there were definitely times when it helped that she was there to talk to some, while I talked to others.  Since I started this, I've become good at spotting the moments where I can grab everyone's attention and address the entire room, but that's not always the easiest thing to do; especially when everyone is enthusiastic and a bit animated.

It didn't help that we were having to improvise a lot of the time.  I had needed to take my glasses off, so I could wear the mask - so after the first pose, I had to grab Ragna's attention to get them back, so I could actually see the pictures and announce a winner to the first drawing challenge.  During the second pose, I noticed that the coloured chalks were missing, because Ragna hadn't realised where they were.  I'd bought little tins for them a few weeks ago, so they could look better.  I saw them still sitting on the table where I'd left them, got one of the girls to pass them forward.

Then, for the third pose, I had to remember where I'd left the props -  and again, I had to ask one of the girls to pass them forward to me.  These were clumsy little moments, but I managed to laugh about it.  I always figure that we should be as smooth and professional as possible, but there are inevitably going to be little things that go wrong - and so long as they're not serious issues, we can joke about them and they hopefully become funny rather than irritating. 

For the first time in months... probably for the first time since it was given to me by one of the girls in a previous class three years ago... I produced the willy warmer.  I found it recently, and added it to the bag of props a couple of days ago.  For a while I didn't think any of the girls were going to be interested in it, so it lay on the floor for ages, after being introduced.  But it was eventually introduced to one of the poses.  There's something slightly surreal about pulling a willy warmer on, when surrounded by people, but I managed it.

And for this event, there were actually four penis pictures to pose with.  One of them actually made me think of one of those cartoon representations of a fish that had been eaten - those pictures of the head and skeleton.

Later, Ragna and I went to get something to eat and catch up about stuff in general.  I made sure I let her know I had appreciated her help a lot, this time.  And I apologised for the couple of moments where things got slightly chaotic.

I had leaned on her pretty heavily at times during this class - relying on her to keep up with the scoring, to pass out sketchpads, to even - at times - make requests of her while she was still carrying out an earlier request.  Sometimes the second request even contradicted the earlier one, when I changed my mind and went with a different tactic.  The girls in this group were quick to protest, for example, when they disagreed with a scoring decision I'd made and a couple of times their logic was compelling and persuasive.  So there was at least one occasion where I asked Ragna to deduct points from one person, then - while she was still getting that person's name - reversed my decision and asked her to restore them.  If her head was reeling a couple of times,  it would have been completely understandable. 

I will not hesitate to hire Ragna again, for any future classes in Glasgow.  She seems to completely understand the nature of these events and is a great tutor.