Posing for figure drawing class

I am a confident person. I am a performer at heart. I am comfortable in my own skin. So being naked in front of a room full of artist is not difficult. The challenging part of modeling for a figure drawing class is coming up with interesting poses one can hold. The one minute poses are fine. I rock at one minute poses.

My one minute poses invoke dance and yoga, real life experiences, interesting twists and turns of ribcage and pelvis, arms outstretched or entwined, eyes searching the sky or the past. Five minute poses still have some of these qualities but when we get to the fifteen minute poses, I am "nude in recline." I sit. I kneel. I lean. I lay. Every once in a while I will stand but I have to make sure my hips are in line, my neck is just so, my arms are not throwing me off balance, and that nothing is pressing into any part of my body. One table or stool edge pressing on a thigh isn't much for five minutes. Add in another ten, however, and it feels as if the edge has permanently pinched all nerves, veins and arteries in that locale. Did you know that a whole leg could fall asleep?

The thiry minute poses do me in. Change "nude in recline" to "sleeping nude." At this point it is 8:30 at night. I've been awake since 5 am. First, I went to the gym and took a yoga class. Next, I chaffeured my children around from baseball, to camp, to swim lessons. We had two scraped knees along the route and at least five arguments which sent my small son into a fit of whining that made me want to rip my hair out. (Or maybe his.) After all this driving and refereeing, I plopped my children infront of the TV while I whipped up home-made pizza. I digress. As I pose nude at 8:30 pm, head on pillow, legs on a box slightly askew, one hand on belly the other above my head, I fall asleep. Not a deep sleep mind you. A cat nap sort of sleep. Twenty minutes into the pose I am wide awake again but I cannot feel my biceps in the raised arm. "I'm sorry," I say, "I have to put my arm down." It takes a good five minutes trying to get the blood back into that part of my arm. In the mean time an artist says, "Your arm keeps moving." That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, because I thought I had lost all movement in that arm. "I'm sorry," I say and keep still.

Another thing about posing is the time you have just being. It is a slightly meditative state where knots in the wooden floor can be figured into dogs, or old ladies with floppy hats. The cupboard pulls in this studio, for instance, look as if they are cartoon eyes staring right back at you. You can count the drips off the skylight as it rains or listen to the Veery birds at dusk. All this in your best suit without any children about.