Burlesque Life Drawing at the Folk House

Being new to Bristol, I have no idea where to start when it comes to places to go and things to do, so I was glad this came up, Burlesque Life Drawing at the Folk House.

I've heard of it before in London and never got round to going, so a bunch of us from work went along with sketchbooks tucked under arm and bags brimming with pens and chalks. The Folk House is tucked down an alley on the side of a very steep hill with lots of shops on. Once you go down the alley it opens up behind the shops into a court yard, it had a nice feel to the place. The hall was large enough and already full (though not too full) and there was an easel free so I nabbed it.

I prefer to life draw standing up, because it's more physical and you can pull the poses your trying to draw, and I like to take my shoes off, because then I feel more relaxed, and can focus more. It's been a long time since I've done life drawing so took me a while to warm up (and those drawings aren't on here!) but once I got into the headspace, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I remembered about using fingers to smudge helps to feel the contours and sculpt the image. The other trick I used was, using a light skin tone pastel, I mapped out the figure in quick marks, then went in with the pencil, that helped alot.

We had two models Delilah Di Sgrace and GoldiLox, they held a selection of burlesque poses for a range of 10-20minutes.

Some of my better images are the 20minute ones although one of my favourites is the hula hoop one which was the last one of the night, a 5 minute pose, which by then I was really warmed up and found it easy and fun.