The Fun of Modeling

**I'm going to include a few photos with this post.  The last one will be a full frontal, not-safe-for-work shot, so  if you'd rather not see it, don't scroll all the way down.**

I've had quite a few fun sessions this past week, which just makes my return to full-time IT work that much more difficult.  Last Wednesday (the day Van Cliburn died), I was the model for a project in which each member of the class participated in a single drawing.  They all took turns placing marks on the page, filling in whatever they thought the drawing needed at the time.  And the drawing was done on large paper attached to the wall.  The result was moved out into the hallway gallery, and I got a shot of it below.  It's not the most accurate drawing anatomically or proportionally, but the class had a great time doing it.  And I had fun watching them (until my back started hurting from the pose).

This week at the University of North Texas, the Drawing II classes have been working on a fun project.  The students have to draw from the model doing one of three things:  exaggeration (making one or more body parts larger than normal), dislocation (moving body parts around by changing perspective, etc.), or transfiguration (drawing the figure and incorporating some kind of animal into it).  To help with the transfiguration, several stuffed, toy, or model animals were scattered throughout the room.  Here's the setup of the room I was in earlier today:

The most impressive stuffed animal was, of course, the mountain lion.  Unfortunately, my pose was independent of everything else, so I didn't get to do one that looked like I was interacting with it.  The class did do some warm-up gestures before the long drawings, and I did do one two-minute pose bent over with my arm outstretched toward the raccoon, as if I were offering it food (probably not a good idea if it were a live raccoon).

Here are some shots of some of the drawings at the end of class...

And finally, I couldn't resist getting a picture of myself with the mountain lion.  One of the students graciously took this shot of me on my phone (NSFW):