Last life class, drawing a scientist

It is supposed to be summer, so evening classes have ended. For our last session we had a remarkably good model. A young woman who has just finished her undergraduate degree in neuroscience in Iceland and starts her post graduate studies in London in September.

She posed superbly well and could hold a pose for half an hour, which is not easy. But this was the first time she had ever posed nude in front of strangers. She said she had been really nervous until she took her robe off, and then it just felt normal. I asked her why she had thought to take up life modelling. She said she had had a series of internal operations and she had become very self conscious about her body. She decided she needed to do something about it, and stripping naked in a class seemed a bold way of facing it. It seemed to have worked. She looked the most relaxed person in the room. She kept asking questions about how we drew her. She said she could draw brains really well, but nothing else! A remarkable woman, but she will have gone back to her studies before next autumn’s classes start.