Posing

The platform against the wall in the middle of the studio was framed by a semi-circle of stand-up easels and stools, with flat tables on either end of the room. A thin, rough-shaven man with a slight Euopean accent fussed with drawing paper and signup sheets, a bit unsure of whether he had enough determination to settle everyone down and get the life-drawing session underway. The model was a small woman with braided grey hair tied above her head; she sat beside a space heater in a checkered bathrobe; her brows and shoulders showed wear or perhaps worry, as she quietly removed her slippers and prepared to disrobe; she stretched her arms in the air above her and bent her back and her hips. I felt that beneath her unsmiling expression was curiosity as if she wanted to make eye contact but it wasn’t what she did as a nude model; eye contact would get in the way; from the very first moments of the gathering of nervous sketchers she was to be a pliant body, holding 1 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute, and 30 minute poses, in charge not only of what we would draw but how we would feel about her. Every pose included a downward glance suggesting melancholy but really showing only superiority and control. Yet her naked body—the thin crease lines in her skin above her hips when she twisted in position, the short sharp line of her backside curving up toward her spine in repose, the dark wrinkled nape of her neck below her hair—told its own story without words. She was being paid to expose her arms and ears and breasts and belly and braids; her choices of position, her tilted head, her delicate fingers and ankles, her frowning lips, exposed her as well, and it was that which I missed in my awkward work.