[aktdrawing]

At the Fine Arts School, She Poses Nude, They Sketch Her

In the age of 3D software and all things digital, live models are still very much part of sketching and painting classes at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Le Mans.
Sketching classes with nude live models continue at the Fine Arts school in Le Mans, surrounded by around forty students.
The scene is set. At the entrance of the large classroom, in the heart of the Fine Arts school, daylight lingers on the elongated, hairless buttocks of La Frileuse, a snow-white plaster cast by Jean-Antoine Houdon, a major 18th-century sculptor. The sculpture stands to the left of the door through which forty students file in, armed with HB pencils, charcoal sticks, watercolor pans, erasers, and sable-hair brushes.
“Close the curtains!” asks the teacher, Guy Brunet. He has been teaching here since 1983, after having been a student himself at the Le Mans Fine Arts school. “I’m a dinosaur now,” he smiles.
“I avoid staring at the students”
The Gallo-Roman wall of Le Mans fades away behind the curtains like something erased. The students arrange themselves in a circle. In the center, a large orange mat. Behind it, Camille (1) changes—or rather slips into her Eve costume—in a tiny storage room filled with other plaster casts and a plastic anatomical mannequin.
Camille, 18, steps out decisively and walks to the central mat. A blue terry towel tied around her waist, as if she had just stepped out of the shower. Her job—because she is paid for it—begins now. Under the heat lamps. With a natural gesture, Camille drops her towel. A hint of embarrassment shows in her cobalt-blue eyes, even as she tries to brush aside her emotions. “I avoid looking at the students because when I was in their place last year, I was afraid of making the model uncomfortable by staring,” she tells us after class. So Camille looks toward the tips of her toes. For her first pose, she simply steps her right leg forward while remaining standing, arms behind her back. “At first, I let them choose the pose,” the teacher reveals behind the scenes. Like a spring suddenly released, the forty students throw themselves onto their blank pages.
A striking silence. Legs crossed on their tall stools, some work at their easels. Others sit cross-legged with spiral notebooks on their laps, while their neighbors kneel, elbows pressed to the floor, working on A3 sheets laid directly on the parquet floor. And off they go for several rounds of seven to eight minutes of stillness. Camille does her job with dignity and poise.
With the tips of their pencils, the students try to follow her silhouette as faithfully as possible. The results are surprising: the works vary widely in style, from abstract watercolor to academic sketch.
Now the model sits. For another seven minutes. Then she lies down on the mat. With different poses. Guy Brunet rotates the mat to change perspectives. Unflappable, Raphaël, 18, constantly erases and corrects his lines, eyes fixed on the model. Embarrassed? “At first it feels strange, but you end up seeing only the lines. And it’s very useful for practicing your draftsmanship,” he says, sharpening a 2B black pencil. “I’m too shy to do that,” notes Apolline, 20. “But it’s great that she does.”
A break between poses
A break is needed between the two hours of class. A chance for Camille to catch her breath: “You can feel the muscles burning in your legs.” To keep from getting bored, Camille recites multiplication tables to herself. One idea among others. She also takes the opportunity to look at the students’ work: “For some, you think—they have a lot of talent. For others, they still have the whole year to learn.”
Class resumes. Camille “is going to move part of her body and you’re going to reproduce the transformation of that movement in the same drawing,” the teacher suggests. At the heart of the exercise: the mechanics of anatomy. Erasers rub in every direction. Always attentive to the model, Guy Brunet checks in with her: “Are you okay? It’s a bit long this time.” New movements. “Identify the areas that have barely moved and start from there,” he advises.
End of class. In a flash, the booming noise of a classroom reclaims the space. Like a release after this intimate, precious moment. Almost from another time. May these art classes continue to endure—with their live model at the center—even in this age of all things on-screen.