h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi!

I have been an artists' model for about seven years. I started when I was 16 (or maybe earlier, since my dad is an artist and he used all of us -this is, my three sisters, my mother and me- for modelling from time to time), posing with clothes for a year or three at a small academy near my home town. It wasn't much of work, since all the adults from the class were mainly there to drink coffe, gossip and sketch, so I could take short poses (15 minutes or less). But it didn't get paid well at all! (let's calculate this... must have been about 4 pounds per hour!..) Anyway, since you can't get any other job when you're that young, in Belgium, it was worth it!

During my university studies, I posed naked for a LOT of different classes in an art school in the city I was studying, adults as well as adolescents, painters, draughtsmen, sculptors... It was hard, but I liked it and the payment was good. I liked it because it was the only opportunity I seemed to have to 'meditate' : I used to count, and sing to myself, I analysed the contents of my head a thousand times, I studied the way a specific bodypart was placed only by thinking about the places it touched other bodyparts or surroundings, I imagined following the way my blood flowed, I studied within millimeters how I was sitting (to prevent from interfering with the artists' way of working after taking a pause). It took me a couple of months to learn how to slightly stretch nearly every part of my body and restore the pose afterwards in exactly the same way it was before.

I became to believe it is an art to pose.

For the moment, I only pose for friends who really want me too or who are in trouble because of an absent model. I recommend modelling for anyone who doesn't feel good about his or her body, for anybody who doesn't know how to relax anymore, and you meet a lot of new people to!

oops! I'm ranting..

I liked your entry a lot!

h³

I havent come across a more sincere and impressive reflection about being a model. I really liked the way you treat modelling as an art. It really is. The grace of a reclining woman is undescribably divine. I love sketching the female form...to highlight the various hues of sentiments in them. Though I never sketched a model...always been 'throwing it out of my mind upon the sheet', I can feel the way it goes.

Take care
Neel