Timmy Mallett's glasses

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".

Sombreros

I forgot the feedback book for this class.  I was absolutely gutted when I realised that I hadn't mentioned it or produced it.  I actually was winding the class down and was just about to mention it, when someone said something to me, I answered and forgot all about it.  Which means I don't have a photograph of one of those colourful pages to help illustrate this blog.  One of those pictures full of glowing praise and testimonials to my capacity to entertain.  I'm going to have to hope that my own words and these other photographs will tell the story instead.

It was a class held in a private venue and as we were walking towards it, I told Alison that I thought it was on the same street as a class we'd held before, more than a year ago.  As we turned onto the relevant street, and the details of that other class started coming back, I remembered that it had been a venue that a large group of girls had rented specially for the weekend.  And once we got inside, it was confirmed - this was the same venue.  It made me wonder about the possibilities of hiring a place like that for the weekend and providing a group with a place to stay as well as a nude male model - or group of models - to entertain them for the duration of their weekend.  The price for such a weekend would be incredibly high, but it would definitely be a fun weekend.

We got to the front door about five minutes before the class was due to start and Alison noticed someone look out the window at us, even as I dialled the number of the girl who had booked us.  I make a point of calling ahead, rather than ringing the bell, just in case the girls want to sneak us in past anyone who doesn't know what's going on.  And once again, it was the right thing to do - someone was hurrying downstairs to meet us, already.  We were ushered in and shown to the kitchen, where I got undressed and Alison started getting the sketchpads ready.  And then she went into the sitting room, while I lurked by the closed door and waited for my cue.

While I stood in the hallway and waited for my cue, I saw a couple of piles of sombreros and couldn't resist the opportunity to grab an extra prop for the class.  So when my introduction came, I was wearing one of them as I entered the room.  Comedy props are always fun and they're even more fun when they're provided by the girls themselves.  And anyway... who can resist putting on a sombrero when they see one just lying around?  Quite clearly, the only people in this world who can resist are people with no sense of fun in their souls.  And to walk into a room full of women, completely naked apart from a comedy hat... moments like that come round all too rarely.

Sometimes there are classes where Alison and I barely even have to work.  We just turn up and I take my clothes off, start the drawing challenges and barely get a chance to settle in before the questions, jokes and laughs start flying.  Those are fun classes and this was definitely one of them.  Words like "raucous" and "bawdy" would probably be appropriate here.  A couple of the girls might have been a little shocked at the sense of humour of their friends, but I wasn't.  I was really enjoying myself.

One of the girls was taking pictures on her iPad.  She told everyone that the pictures were being streamed directly to the Cloud, where the bride's future husband would be immediately able to see them.  Alison and I thought that was funny and were talking about this afterward.  Did he get an immediate alert every time a new picture was taken, and did he look at each one with trepidation?  Technology is amazing.  To be able to share something so quickly - even as the event is still going on - is incredible.  I'm amazed that, so far, nobody has ever set up a Skype connection so that unseen people can observe in an even more "live" capacity.

When the classes finish, Alison and I always like to conclude with a couple of group pictures, just for a final laugh.  This time, someone decided it would be fun if we used the  couch and if I lay across the knees of some of the more adventurous girls.  That was interesting too, but I had to figure out the best way to do so.  It would have been much easier to lay down face first, but then there would have been too much potential for a bit of "brushing" against the knees of the girls, so I had to figure out how to sit on someone's knee, then lay down backwards - all without crushing anyone in the process.  I managed it with a little difficulty, but then the challenge was to get up, turn round so my head was at the opposite end and do it all over again.

Thinking back, I can't help wondering if anyone would have taken genuine offence if I'd gone for the easy option and moved in face-forward - which would have provided more PG versions of the resulting photographs as well - but it's moments like that where common sense prevails.  Although I'm reminded of one of Tyler Durden's early lines in Fight Club - "Now a question of etiquette - do I give you the ass or the crotch?"

And in yet one more twist, I was asked to pose for pictures with a cut-out "mask" of the bride's husband over my face.  He definitely looks like he has a sense of humour.  I certainly hope so, anyway.

I may have stolen a book.  That's the final detail.  While I was getting ready to start the class, I noticed a pile of Adam Lyall's Witchery tales books on the kitchen table and thumbed through it briefly.  A couple of minutes later, I saw another one in the case where I keep the sketchpads.  As we walked to the bus stop later, I asked Alison if one of the girls had given it to her and if she'd stuck it into the case for safekeeping, but she didn't know about it.  Which means someone either stuck it into the case for us, or it somehow managed to get in there accidentally.  Either way, I assumed at the time that it had been a gift.  But just in case, I better get in touch with the girls and make sure.  I'd hate to ruin a good class by becoming a thief right at the end.

The QI logic

I've been invited to a wedding.  For the first time ever, one of my clients liked me well enough to invite me to attend her wedding.  It's in Pitlochry later this year, and I'm really looking forward to it.  Worryingly, it's going to have a Medieval theme going on, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to swing that.  I don't have any clothes available that I can use.  I'll need to try to get creative, somehow.

For this class, I worked with two tutors.  Edith and (arriving slightly later) Marie-Dominique.  Edith was presenting the class for the first time, while Marie-Dominique was mostly observing.

One of my favourite drawing challenges in this class was the "straight lines" challenge.  It's always a fun one and it's always pretty cool to see how people would get renewed confidence as a result of it - girls who thought they couldn't draw would suddenly find themselves making some really cool pictures.  But this week, they seemed to be even better and more artistic than usual.

I was going to choose one particular picture that had some great, angular lines but I got outvoted and ended up going for the one where I supposedly looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster, but with a six-pack.  I'm not entirely sure I agree with that, but it was still a good picture.

Since the random points element of the last class went so well, I returned to that concept and briefly explained it to Edith.  I was going to tear a page out of a sketchpad, like last time, but she spotted a scoreboard, which we used instead.  I'll use that at future bookings in The Standard from now on.  It's going to save a bit of paper.

Using the QI logic, I deducted points as well as awarding them throughout the class.  Towards the end, one of the girls had a very good lead while another had lost loads and gained none.  This girl tried to talk me into contriving some sort of scenario where she would get enough points that she'd still win.  It was definitely tempting, but in the end I played fair.  Not through any moral high ground situation - just because it, at that point, it seemed like that would be more fun to do so.

The collaborative challenge had some particularly creative interpretations going on this time.  One group ended up dividing the body in a very imaginative way.  This group didn't divide me into the usual three key areas of head, torso and legs.  Instead, they took individual parts from all over my body, then tore up the sheets of paper to make them all fit together.  The first photographs where they held all those parts up over my body to illustrate what they had in mind didn't work anywhere near as well as when they simply laid them all down on the floor.  I'm really glad I got a picture of that myself, because it worked amazingly well, when it was laid out like that.

I've been asked occasionally about what I'd do if there was a man in any of my classes.  It's happened before and I never had a problem with it at all.  This is the sort of question that honestly, genuinely surprises me. I'm standing naked before a lot of women and I don't feel remotely self-conscious.  I can't figure out why people would assume that the presence of another man would cause a problem.  There was a man in this class as well, and he seemed to have as good a time as any of the girls there.

Also... for the second time this year, I had a group where there was at least one girl who would have been happy to get naked as well.  For a moment it looked like she really was seriously considering it, and trying to decide whether it would be a good idea or not.  Ultimately, however, she kept her clothes on.  Though later, she mentioned it again and commented on how she thought it might not have been appropriate.

This is the sort of thing that I think is down to the dynamics of the group.  When there are a lot of clothed women (or mostly women) and one naked man, then everything is pretty clear.  If one women gets naked, that would tip the balance of power, and then the dynamic would shift a bit.  I'm not automatically opposed to that happening, though.  But it's definitely something that should be a group decision.  It would be interesting to see how things would go if anyone ever did join me, but I'm definitely going to wait for it to be something that happens naturally.  Still... it would be an interesting world if there were more exhibitionists like me in it.

My favourite picture this time, was really heavy on the black charcoal and looked very artistic.  It was one part of one of the collaborative challenge, and probably wasn't all that flattering to me (there was a certain lack of size going on) but it looked cool, so it just had to win.

It definitely was a fun group.  And a good one for both Edith and Marie-Dominique to be part of as their first.  I still don't know if I'm going to be able to get to the wedding, because that depends on a bit of scheduling I've got going on that weekend.  But I really hope I'll be able to get there, because it sounds like it'll be a lot of fun.