Go Figure
Nude models animate life drawing classes

By Jaime DeGroot

	Photo by Brian J. Morowczynski Student canvases show a variety of interpretations.

While nude modeling is by no means related to the “oldest profession,” it shares a few common attributes. One, practitioners must get naked for money. Two, they’ve been doing it for centuries.

“This is the most difficult job you can ever do,” says Jeff, a Columbia College figure drawing model. “Nothing is harder than this, and I worked construction.”

Figure drawing models are required to create their own poses. They often pull from activities such as ballet, yoga, various sports and martial arts in order to come up with forms that best exemplify the human anatomy. They get just as sore as athletes, holding poses for 30 minutes to an hour as students hurriedly try to depict them by sketching basic stick figures with heads like marshmallows.

In the classroom, with the blinds drawn, the model is encircled by students. The view each gets depends on little more than luck. Some get a profile, others get the front, and then there are those who get the butt.

Jeff says he tries to do everything he can to help the students create their best work. He works out, tans and shaves most of his body hair in order to provide them with a form that will translate well on paper. He spends about 45 minutes per week on body preparation, shaving and applying sunless tanner. He is paid $14 an hour for the time he spends in the figure drawing class.

Jeff knows that a lot of what these students do is unrelated to creating masterpieces for museum walls. Students’ vocational interests range from architecture to cartoons, but they all need to learn to draw the human form. And although many of the drawings aren’t highly accurate representations of the model, they are part of the learning process.

Some people question the relevance of continuing to teach students such an old practice when today’s focus in the arts is more on conceptual, abstract and nonrepresentational art. But art schools and instructors insist that students need to learn this traditional skill, which dates back to the Renaissance.
“Life drawing is relevant as an articulation of human thinking,” says Max King Cap, professor of art and design and coordinator of painting and drawing at Columbia College. He says capturing true life on paper is the index for art, fashion and media in modern society. “It is not only appropriate, it is essential,” he says.

Most of the students agree. “When you see a nude painting in a museum, it’s kind of the same thing I’m doing,” says Erin Baugher, a figure drawing student. “It’s just people.”

Baugher’s classmate, John West, says, “This is my first class drawing nude guys. You do what you got to do to draw.”

King Cap says most models are more than 25 years old and female. Many are dancers, who have the right body type for drawing — lean and muscular — and are more accustomed to displaying their bodies.

He strongly prefers experienced models. He remembers one of his favorites, who he describes as “thin to medium build, muscular and she could stand on one leg for an hour. She could stay silent [or] talk to you. She wouldn’t move, and never fell asleep. She was amazing.”

Anyone who is unable to keep his or her work on a professional level doesn’t make it in this job.

“We had this one strange voyeuristic man who was like an odd nudist on acid,” King Cap recalls. “He had intricately shaved pubic hair, almost like a design or something. Everybody was just freaked out. Never again, no.”

On problem days, students resort to drawing the skeleton.

“Someone told me even Leonardo said it has a mind of its own,” he adds.

The risk of embarrassment is well worth the reward for models like Jeff. He’s pleased to play a useful role in the artistic community, and regards his modeling as a form of art.

“You’ll see statues around, in Grant Park or whatever, and think, ‘Yeah, yeah. I do that.’”