Wonderfully extraordinary work.
The movements of the live model present challenges and opportunities. Your group likely takes various measures to return the model to the pose after a break, but I'll just mention our practice of using electrician's tape (not masking tape, which is dreadful to remove after a time) to mark the positions of the model's feet, the chair legs, the point on the chair back where the arm lies across it, the place on the rope or staff where the model's hand grasps it -- anywhere that can be established as a "fixed" point. The taped markings remove the debate as to whether the foot was this way or that. There are still going to be fluxuations in the pose -- the whole point of the live model being the organic, living nature of the subject -- but having those few anchors goes a long way toward keeping the variations within an acceptable range.
As Mari suggested, calls for the model to make adjustments in the pose have to come from 1) a limited number of 2) experienced artists. It is too often the beginner who is first to insist that the model's pose has changed, which can be the result of his (it's usually a brash young male) having made firm drawing commitments before the model has settled into the pose, which in turn rarely happens until 10 or 15 minutes have passed. (For that reason, the tape references should not be placed until just prior to the first break, to allow for whatever adjustments and movement may occur as the model relaxes into the pose.)
Sometimes the model can be helped by having her indicate the point on the far wall or the floor where her gaze is focused, with that point then also being marked with a piece of tape so that after a break the model can orient the turn of her head or the spiral of the torso. This is helpful even within the pose period, as a model's mind wanders and the pose changes and needs to be reestablished.
I suppose it's like being responsible for continuity between takes on a movie set, making sure that the eyeglasses are in the same position on the end table and the flowers in the vase are still daisies and not dahlias. Even with experienced artists present, surprising oversights occur. I recall one session in which everyone had some objection to the pose, but no one could figure out what was "wrong." Everything was exactly on the tapes, including the wooden wedge beneath one of the model's feet. I finally saw the problem, asked the model to lift his foot, and turned the wedge so that the toe, rather than the heel, was lifted. The change had a marked effect throughout the anatomy. (We had wedges of different heights in the studio as well, and picking up the wrong one was an occasional problem.) Another time the same model was using his hand on a chair back to support some of his weight. The chair legs were within the tape references, the feet were where they belonged, but everyone was having trouble with their drawings. I don't remember what led me to see this, but I realized that the chair was turned a full 90 degrees from its position at an earlier session, which was causing the model to rest his hand and arm in a quite different manner and was throwing off the whole posture.
I've only encountered one model who did not move -- one of Daniel Greene's models, referred to by some as "The Rock," so solid and unwavering was he, seeming not even to breathe. Rather than asking for frequent adjustments, it's often possible to just work on a different area of the drawing or painting for a while, perhaps closer to one of the "anchor" points, until the pose naturally returns again to "where it belongs," and then go back to work on the affected areas.
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Hybrid Mode
