Many many moons ago when I was seventeen we started doing life drawing at my school. there were a few models they used but the most common two were a lady about thirty, nice looking, slightly plump but attractive and Alan. Alan was a thirtyish year old gay guy who was just very average looking. Physique wise he was 5' 10" or so, maybe just under 200lbs, slightly balding, wore glasses. Nothing offensive but as a seventeen year old lad I obviously started off preferring drawing boobies to schlong.

Thing is, I always drew better when drawing Alan because I just wasn't as distracted I suppose. He was a really nice guy and we got to know him pretty well over the year or so we did the class. I'd grown up doing a lot of sailing at a club with communal showers for the men so naked guys were no mystery to me. I wasn't offended by him and he certainly never did any poses like the guy in this video.

Fast forward ten years and I'm at a friend's house party. I know about half the people there and there's a lot of people from her work that I don't know. She worked at a medieval castle as a wench for their banquets and a lot of her actor colleagues were there. I kept catching the eye of this guy, forty years or so old, 5' 10" and just over 200lbs, pretty bald. You know when you get that feeling that you know someone? The face is familiar but you can't for the life of you remember where you've seen him before. Worse was the feeling that it was someone I knew quite well, not just someone I'd bumped into in the supermarket or something like that.

He looked puzzled by me too and we eventually got talking in the kitchen about where we knew each other from. We went through everything, from what we did for a job, where we'd worked, where we lived and drew blanks every time.

We went further and further back in time until he stopped, grinned and said 'you didn't go to Woodland's school did you?'

In that instant I knew exactly who he was, laughed and completely without thinking blurted 'Alan! I didn't recognise you with your clothes on!'

Of course it went quiet and I had to explain to my wife why I didn't recognise the gay guy with his clothes on (not helped by the fact that it was an all boys school). I still have paintings and drawings of him in my attic somewhere, which my wife was 'thrilled' to be shown!

Life drawing is great, and you don't need a 'fit' or attractive model. Anyone will do, in fact the more normal the better I think. It helps you look at what's there rather than any sort of ideal you might have in your head.

In fairness, that would be my first pose too.

Most of the models we drew in early college were older people, a really fat guy with a strange inverted penis, a black lady with an Asian dragon tattoo, a guy with one arm shorter than the other (we were told not to mention the arm and to try and draw it like a normal arm), a ripped Hispanic guy, a black guy with a pretty big dick, and, wow, the first time they let in a young attractive woman, I was so red in the face.

I was just used to drawing people I was not attracted to. My girlfriend at the time took life drawing, figure drawing, life sculpting, and human anatomy for the artist classes with me every semester so she totally noticed my reaction and was a little flustered by my obviousness. Ahhh, those were the days.

It's actually more fun and interesting to draw older and fatter people. You learn more about the skin and how it changes with varied bodies and age, similar to the draped cloth exercises in a regular old drawing class.

Don't get me wrong, drawing attractive models is awesome, but you don't get as much out of it as a progressing artist. You need to know varied forms, not just the acceptable Hollywood bodies which most people are NOT.

She noticed your what?

I agree with your post though, you need to learn to draw all the different things out there, not just one thing. It helps with accepting people too. Really makes you realise that everyone is different and everyone is valid.

I'm not sure if I really want to know, but what does an inverted penis look like?