Give Them a Nice Dress And a Cup of Tea….

I am quite pleased with myself that I have managed to get in about six sessions with  ‘live’ models in the last two weeks (since I decided that this was going to be one of my arty missions for the summer). After some initial reluctance I have managed to achieve a level of cooperation and participation that I have to say I did not really think was possible from my lovely but oh so self-critical dear teenage daughters!

The trick is to offer them the choice of every dress in your closet – and perhaps a cup of tea! They both love to act and with these props and the promise that ‘it won’t look anything like YOU’ they were suddenly quite willing to give me half an hour here and twenty minutes there in the name of artistic learning. So far the props of choice are my 20+ year old wedding dress and a reddish, silk, number which has faint gold threads running through it and Mum is too fat to fit any more 😦  (I knew I must be keeping both of those for a reason!)

I don’t know what I would do without these two girls. Probably make hundreds of sketches of my husband’s head whilst he stares into a computer screen/his phone! Or the blurred back of my son as he rushes away with a yucked out expression on his face! One of the major reasons so many artists do very little drawing from life is the lack of willing and available models, so I am ultra grateful for this opportunity that I have and I must keep making hay whilst the sun shines – because, come September, they will be back at their schoolwork and there will be no more modelling time to be found!

Thank you to two Awesome Young Women!!! Is anyone else out there using their kids shamelessly as models for their art??