DRAWN IN BY ONLINE ART

Gayle joins an online life-drawing class with Lucian Freud’s muse

L ooking for someone to draw or paint a flattering, lifelike representation of yourself ? Avoid me at all costs. Poor Murray Chalmers fell victim to my distinct lack of artistic skills when I attempted to portray him in an online class.

I was one of around 40 students taking part in the session run by Sue Tilley, best known for modelling nude for the revered artist Lucian Freud in the 1990s.

Freud’s life-sized paintings, which depict Sue in all her curvaceous glory dozing on a couch, set records at auction houses.

Fife-based food writer and PR guru Murray has known Sue since the ’80s – they went clubbing together in London and share the same circle of friends.

It’s Murray’s post on Facebook about his plans to pose for Sue’s online life drawing class that catches my attention.

Will he be naked? Lying on a couch? All sorts of thoughts whizz through my mind.

Intrigued, I register my interest and when the session goes live, I’ve got pencils and paper at the ready.

It’s very laid-back – there’s no sense of elitism or arty snobbery here.

In essence, Murray chats with Sue while folk attempt to draw or paint him.

I spend the first 10 minutes of the hourlong session simply observing Murray... and realising that capturing his “essence” is going to be tough. And no, he’s not naked.

I briefly toy with the idea of “going Picasso” but I’m not set up with paint and all that palaver.

There are two things that flummox me about painting Murray – his glasses and his tattoos, and Murray has heaps of tattoos.

I breathe a sign of relief when he removes his specs – I can see his eyes! – but then someone types a message encouraging him to put them back on. Bah!

I struggle with everything – nose, lips, forehead, ears – and how on Earth do you draw teeth?

Ultimately, my portrayal of Murray is mortifying and I can only apologise to the poor man.

Murray – rest assured you look absolutely nothing like this!

As the session comes to a close, Sue encourages us to share our artworks via Facebook Messenger.

I’m reluctant, but in the spirit of all things creative and open-minded, I do so.

These are displayed for all to see, and then posted on the Isolation Station Hastings Facebook page the following day.

A few are excellent – clearly some talented artists have joined in, many hailing from across the globe – but Sue reckons “anything produced is worthwhile” and says she loves “all of it”.

“I love it when people use different materials, whether a lipstick or a pizza box to draw on,” she says.

“Someone even recreated one of my models in snow in a cocktail glass.”

Sue plans to show the work at “a proper physical exhibition”, when Covid allows. Eek!

In terms of models, Sue usually asks people she knows, but also those who do “great things” in the community, such as black activist Claudine Eccleston and former refugee Rosanna Leal.

Then there are the celebrity sitters. “I’ve had Mark Moore, from S’express, Corinne Drewery, from Swing Out Sister, Michele Clapton who designs costumes for Game Of Thrones, and Fat Tony, a top DJ and addiction adviser,” she tells me.

“Last week’s guest was Panti Bliss, a drag queen and gay activist, and this Monday is a surprise.”

O ver the last few weeks, I have been spending much time immersed in woodlands on the fringes of Kinross-shire in search of badgers.

Cubs are being born about now, and more for peace of mind than anything else, I like to check that my local setts are still occupied.

Thankfully, most of them are and it is always exciting to find signs of badger activity, including fresh digging. Other indications I frequently encounter include discarded bedding, comprising grass and bracken, that has been removed from their underground chambers during spring-cleaning.

Badgers are fastidious creatures and constantly change their bedding. Last year, one of my trail-cameras filmed a fascinating clip of a sow badger bundling grass and other vegetation under her chest, which was held in place with her forepaws, before she then jerkily moved backwards to carry the material underground.

Wandering through these badger woodlands brings many other rewards, with song thrushes and blackbirds now tuning-up with their beautiful spring songs. Great spotted woodpeckers are also making their presence felt, and I adore the machine-gun like rattling that resonates through the air as they furiously drum their bills against hollow tree boughs to advertise their presence to other woodpeckers.

In one established pine forest in my local area, the signs of woodpeckers are everywhere – with the remnants of long-dead standing trees pock-marked from their pecking as they search for grubs and other invertebrates lying deep within the decaying wood. Woodpeckers play an important role in forest ecosystems, with their excavation work on tree trunks aiding the decomposition process by breaking down wood and providing nooks and crannies for fungi and woodboring insects to find tenure.

During a short spell of heavy snow and hard frost in the middle of February, this same woodland was literally bursting with woodcocks.

During an hour’s walk, I inadvertently flushed more than 10 of these mysterious birds, exploding into the air from under my feet on brown-blurred wings. Woodcocks are a real natural enigma – a long-billed wader that lives in our woodlands. Many, if not all, the birds I glimpsed were most likely winter visitors from Russia.

This damp woodland is characterised by an abundance of boggy margins, some of which remained ice-free, despite the bitter cold. I imagine this proved attractive to the woodcocks, providing a place where they could still eagerly probe for worms in the soft earth.

Apart from snowdrops, the first spring wildflowers have still to emerge. They will do so in the next few weeks – lesser celandines and wood anemones being the precursors, especially those found on sunnier south facing slopes.

In the darker, damper woodland recesses, oppositeleaved golden saxifrage is also starting to carpet the ground. Each flower is subtle and small, and hard to discern individually, but when growing together, form a distinctive floral tapestry that sweeps across the forest floor like a golden sea.

INFO

Badgers have a broad diet – with earthworms being a main staple. They also eat large insects, including bees and wasps, as well as small mammals and berries.

KEEP THE DAY JOB: Gayle’s ‘mortifying’ portrayal of model Murray Chalmers.

Some of the other artists’ attempts at drawing Murray.

ACTIVITY: Badgers have been making their presence known by cleaning out their woodland setts and having cubs.