Methinks I have mentioned from time to time the existence of The Little Sketching Group (LSG). The LSG was formed just after the turn of the century by my photographer friend Harry and consists mostly of older males and a few females, many of whom are customers of Harry's photography business. The LSG was seen to be necessary because though the local Newburyport art galleries provide some opportunities for sketching enthusiasts to sketch live models, they are often a part of organized art classes and are in any case rather strictly controlled. Harry's friends complained of ugly models, cold studios, hot studios, poor viewing angles and not enough pussy. That is opportunities to sketch pussy, not to get some.
So Harry proposed an arrangement where he would start sponsoring sketching classes at his photography studio. This would solve the problems of heat, cold and viewing angles. He asked me to provide the pussy. For sketching purposes only, of course. I agreed and became principal model (chest puffs out) along with carefully selected guest posers including my cousin Eefje, a popular Dutch import, my sister Robin while she was pregnant, my sister Molly while she was both pregnant and not pregnant and one of Harry's daughters, not pregnant and claiming to be a virgin which excited the artists. Everything worked out very well and we continue to meet every month after a decade and a half.
My first experience with posing for sketching was with my sister Robin, a very competent artist, which to me means if she does your portrait people can actually tell that it's you. In addition to portrait work she liked to work from the nude and I enthusiastically obliged. We were not, of course, the only ones in the house. There was the matter of my three brothers. But I handled the situation with panache and on the approach of any of them with their lacrosse buddies I feigned indifference and remained naked. I mean you have to get dates somehow. I saw Tom Demoulin looking at my naked body and I looked back at him hoping he'd take off that sweaty shirt. Later, alone in my room on my bed he did. Well in my mind he did. He wasn't actually there but the thought of him being there was all I needed along with two fingers on my right hand because I was really horny and it was just glorious and he really did see me naked out in the yard. It's not my fault he had a girlfriend and was otherwise unwilling to screw his teammate's sister but you can see what attracted me to sketching.
Anyway I had been working with my photographer Harry doing catalog work for some time. Some of the legitimate catalog work involved things like sports bras and bikinis. At some point we began to consider doing exhibition work which meant dispensing with the bras and bikinis. The money was better. Harry showed me samples of what we could do, mostly bare boob and bare bum shots. Nothing he showed me was in any way near explicit. Showing off my girlhood was not on the agenda. At least not in good light.
I was anxious to get started. I don't have big boobs but being a jock you can bounce a quarter off my tummy or my bare ass and I'm reasonably pretty so we figured nude photos of me might sell. We decided that as soon as I became legal we would go into business. Frankly, I couldn't wait and in fact we got started a little early, a few bare back shots and some bare ass stuff. At first he offered me pasties for my boobs and tape for my pussy and there was a robe handy if I wanted to cover up in between so he could bring the shots up on his laptop and show me. I eschewed the pasties and robe but I did tape my snatch early on so I wasn't actually naked.
My friends asked me if I was embarrassed to take off all my clothes for a photographer. I wasn't, I was half Dutch after all, and I had read about another model, Siri Erickson, who had posed for Andrew Wyeth from 1967 to 1972. She was quoted as saying she found no embarrassment or awe about posing nude for Wyeth saying he would get totally involved in his work and it was as if you were a tree. That was Harry, except with a camera. I was no different than the white birches in his yard though I admit I always gave a little shiver when I first heard the shutter open in any shoot that I had to strip for. But pretty much I stood there in solitary ecstasy as Harry fired away and my nipples hardened to stone and my girlhood got damp enough to leak down my leg as he told me to put my hands behind my head to grab some hair or move a tad side to side to get a little more tit or bum into his shot.
It was easy. The topless stuff was never any problem, he never noticed my tits and I didn't mind showing them, such as they were. My mother has big boobs and so do my sisters but I was kind of short-changed. For most of the bare ass stuff I could just lower my panties. After a while I ditched the snatch tape and stripped all the way. When we graduated to full nude I was comfy completely naked. He'd compose the shots with a carefully placed thigh or a flower pot. Harry said when he was young all nudes were done like that, unless they were done overseas. Even today in Jennifer Lawrence's movie Red Sparrow when she sits naked in front of the group with the guy who assaulted her in the shower six feet away there's always something obscuring her snatch. But she has great tits so see the film.
Finally we did full on nudes, no real spread leg stuff, but you could indeed see my pussy. Whenever a girl models nude there is always the question of how much, if any, pussy to actually show. Harry had the skills to make me look naked as a jay bird without showing my bunny hole either head on or, if that, in focus. In fact I did want it in at least a few shots to preserve for posterity, my sisters and girl friends and maybe a few selected guys, what I looked like straight out naked, so a few really obvious snatch shots were called for.
Some people I know who know I've posed nude think that in order to really say you've posed nude you have to show snatch. Sometimes maybe, but definitely not always. There's economics. I was shaved clean so any crotch shots were very explicit and the legitimate galleries would not hang them for sale nor would some people buy them. So we stuck to tits and ass mostly. Harry could get good money for a portrait where I only showed boobs and/or my ass. Real pussy shots he kept for his private clients and he had enough that amply displayed my mountain flower but he sold those himself, cutting out the gallery fees so everyone went home happy and my genitals are now a part of art history.
Anyway Harry began exhibiting some of his photographs of me in the local galleries. A few caught people's attention, including some in which I was nude. Also at that time one of the River St. galleries was renting out space for posing sessions for sketching classes and some of Harry's photo customers suggested to Harry that I might make a good sketching model. Harry sensed an opportunity to increase photo sales by popularizing his model.
Accordingly, one Thursday at mid-day Harry and I kept an appointment with the sketching class director to check out the venue and find out what was required. Harry would always do the talking about money, me being uncomfortable talking about getting paid for taking all my clothes off. The director, a woman of about sixty explained that the summer classes for which they needed models were work sessions, as opposed to instructional. This meant that during class she would give instructions to the model but none of any consequence to the artists. They presumably would know what to do and their task was simply to do it with my naked body providing the inspiration.
I knew nothing of sketching. I had learned on the internet that a typical session involved groups of poses lasting as little as thirty seconds and as long as thirty minutes. This was indeed what the lady had in mind, some thirty second poses, then one minutes poses, five minutes, ten and half an hour efforts. The goal was not to produce a likeness of the model but to work on and appreciate form and movement. We would probably work for two and one half hours with the shorter poses occupying the first two hours and then do the half hour pose. I would of course be naked except during breaks when I had to cover myself. No wandering around the studio in the nude like I did at Harry's. I was to wear no jewelry except studs. She asked if I had any tattoos (I don't) and said she preferred models with pubic hair (I have none and didn't plan on growing any).
We inspected the posing premises, a fairly good sized room on the second floor above the old gallery, there being a new gallery on the end of the building nearer Plum Island. It was in that new gallery in which I had stood, unrecognized, a day earlier watching people examine nude photos of me which adorned a small corner of the gallery walls. The sketching room was a tad shabby looking, I thought, crowded with the kind of stuff one might expect to see in the attic of an art gallery.
Anyway, the model posed in the middle of the room on what might have been a coffee table covered by a sheet. I hoped a clean sheet, as she must at some point recline on it in the nude. As I would be posing in the middle of the crowd it occurred to me that at any given time a number of the artists would be staring at my bare ass. This seemed a tad rude but I was later informed that after each pose I would rotate ninety degrees thus affording a changing view. On either side of the posing platform were long tables at which a portion of the artists would sit. Past these were so-called donkeys, small individual seats with lectern type things attached upon which the artist could rest their sketching materials. Further back stood easels behind which artists would stand and then tall chairs upon which more people could sit.
