Suffering for your art

No, not my art. Your art. Or at least, two classrooms full of life drawing students' art. Ow, ow ow.

See, my day job is being a life drawing model at the local community college. Basically, I take off my clothes and sit very very still, while students make vaguely human shaped drawings of me. By the end of the semester mind you, they are making some very nice drawings of me--good enough that I have seen my image in art shows and museums. But it does mean that I tend to work over the school year, and take the summer off.

The semester has just started back up, and today was my first day back at work. Yeow! You would think that just sitting still would be an easy job, wouldn't you? Not so much. Try it sometime. Strike a pose that would be interesting to draw. Make sure your hips, torso, and head are pointed in three different directions--that gives some movement to the drawing. Now, hold it. Keep holding it, for a half hour at a stretch. Then, take a really dynamic pose, like standing on one foot with your hands thrown up in the air, back arched, and your head back. Hold that for just a minute's time. Now, do 24 more just as dynamic, for a minute each, and don't stop in between. Make them all different, too. You'll find it takes mental discipline, and a toned set of muscles.

Muscles that I haven't worked that way since school let out last spring. Oh man. I've taken up yoga recently to try to prep for this, but I guess I haven't been as dedicated as I should have been. Ah, well. One more class tomorrow (3 hours), and I'm off until next week. And within a couple of week's time, my body will have remembered how to do this.

In the meantime...I'm not going to stand at my triloom to finish up the Red Hat shawl I'm working on tonight. I think I'm going to curl up in bed with a trashy book, drink some tea, and call it a day.