This project started with a scratch I couldn't stop itching. What began as a tool for one host in London is evolving into a global vision for the life drawing community.
I run a weekly life drawing class in London. Like so many other hosts, this is a pure labour of love. It doesn’t make money—full stop. It’s born from the madness of passion, but it also takes a massive amount of personal time: finding venues, booking models, keeping the charcoal and paper stocked, and dealing with the inevitable stress of last-minute cancellations.
At its heart, though, it’s about that simple, profound joy of bringing people together into a room to celebrate and draw the magnificent human body.
The Life Drawing Ecosystem
It’s important to remember that the world of life drawing is actually a symbiotic trinity. A model in a safe space with an artist. The session is like a living, breathing thing—if you remove one of these elements, the whole experience loses its breath.
As a host, I provide a safe space where a model can perform with consent and safety, and a place where artists can experience that performance and express themselves in their own unique way. These three roles are deeply interconnected. The question we're answering with this network is: how do we bring these interrelated parts together in a way that respects the art and allows the entire community to thrive?
When the fever to draw visits me, I see no reason why I should not be able to find a place to draw, a model to draw, and a community to share my work with. Whether I'm in London or Timbuktu. (I've never been to Timbuktu, but if I went, I would hope to draw.)
Scratching the itch
Three years into running my class, I became tired of the logistics. The weekly grind of running the show! It kinda kills the overwhelming joy of the drawing itself. So to survive, I built a complex spreadsheet to manage my calendar and model bookings. Not gonna lie, I am quite partial to a good spreadsheet, but even those felt like a burden over time. Clicking is killing me, and oh my gods, let me not get started on the childish narrow-mindedness of Instagram.
A nipple is all it takes to get banned. And not even a photo of a nipple, but a drawing of a nipple. For fuck's sake! (I digress)
So, anyway, I eventually took the spreadsheet idea a step further. I built a simple registration form on my website for models to create their own profiles. I truly am extremely lazy. Trawling Instagram for models is a nightmare. The relief was almost immediate. Suddenly, models were registering directly (some creeps, some bots, some psychos too, but mostly lovely models). I shared the link with other hosts so they had a place to find "new faces" to draw or fill a gap when their own model cancelled. The network had begun to manifest itself. I am not joking. It started to grow without me!
I threw some more time at it and got it to make social media graphics; the spreadsheet got plugged in and out came neat little graphics for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and basically, I got my weekend back.
Nomads and Nooks & Crannies
Then, about one and a half years ago, I met Roger. He's another artist who was doing something similar to me. We are both nomads in the London drawing scene, we both love finding nooks and crannies tucked in unlikely places of the city. And we are both professional software geeks. We hit it off immediately. We compared notes. He had been tracking the places he had drawn at, but much more diligently than I had. So we merged our data and I created a Google Map of London classes.
Oh, and Roger is also an extremely generous guy, and often hosts visiting life models, particularly those visiting from South America. This list of his helped the models find more places to work, and the hosts find more models. (I am sure you can see where this is going :)
Today, that host list is buzzing with activity. It’s gathering interest across town and proving there is a real need for a dedicated space for our community that doesn't rely on the whims of algorithms.
Moving Beyond the "Big Platforms"
If you're a host, you've probably related to this. One thing is running a class, another thing is convincing the world you exist. Marketing is the blackest magic ever. So outside of the Instagramming, you also have to pay for ads and listings on event platforms. These platforms will charge you a monthly fee or capitalise on your ticket sales. I have no issue with that (honestly), however... it is a pain in the arse. So basically you make one vanilla event which looks identical to all the others. There is no easy way to tell your potential customers who will be performing at your event.
Another major annoyance for me is that I do not want to appear next to other events that are not life drawing. Like 'Your Second Life Online: Protecting Your Digital Self' or 'Life, Stuck Together: The Handmade Journal Making Workshop'. What!!!!!!
So somewhere in my subconscious, a long dark fuck you finger started to grow, and it poked me in the eye. And from my middle-aged mud another idea germinated. I started looking at what is available, and what is divorced, and fantasised about what could happen if they got married. These two disconnected pieces; the model registry and the list of hosts, and the EVENT CALENDAR!
What if we connected them?
What if the world of life drawing wasn't held hostage by massive event platforms like Eventbrite or the ever-changing rules of Instagram? Why only help my own class when we can offer a space that could potentially support every life drawing community in the world?
A Global Community
If I were to visit Cape Town or San Francisco, I want to be able to drop into a community just like the one we’ve built in London. I want to see who’s posing, where the room is, and how to get there—without a giant corporation taking a cut of the ticket price.
This new version of the website is the first step toward that vision. We aren’t just building another web page; we are building a home for the community. By bringing the performers and the hosts together on one site, we’re creating a space that belongs to the artists—a place where we celebrate the human form together.
The madness of passion is what got us here. The vision of an interconnected, global community is what’s taking us forward.
How to get involved
If you've been wondering if there's a place for you to get involved, the answer is a resounding "yes."
At this early stage, I’m looking for two primary groups to join us on this journey: models and hosts. Whether you’re a veteran of the podium or a curious newcomer, there’s a seat for you at the table.
Supporting the self-reliant model
We are looking for models from all walks of life, all over the world.
We want to help the voices that are often far-flung and self-reliant. If you live outside of London and support your life through working online—selling reference photographs, streaming your sessions, or participating in virtual life drawing (like Scottish Borders)—we want to hear from you. We’d love to help you build a shared stage where you can find work, and where artists can find you. Our goal is to make it easier for you to run your own self-hosted sessions and connect directly with the community.
Calling all Hosts
No matter where you are hosting your class, I want to speak to you too. We know that classes take many different forms: from traditional, in-person sessions to those reaching a global audience online, or even "hybrid" sessions that share a physical room with a digital audience.
If you're interested, get in touch.
