82-year-old life model on posing naked in front of strangers as they draw him and why he’s good at it
- Believed to be Hong Kong’s oldest life model, David Chappell says years of discipline in Britain’s Royal Air Force helps him stay still in poses lasting hours
- A keen artist himself, he would like to get his nude works more widely known but he says it is a challenge in Hong Kong
It’s Wednesday night at the Hong Kong Art Tutoring studio in North Point and David Chappell is in a familiar position: standing naked and statue-still in front of a group of strangers.
Chappell is a life model and at 82 is believed to be Hong Kong’s oldest. For most people, the thought of disrobing in front of strangers is out of their comfort zone. Not for Chappell. He’s at ease with being seen naked and first started posing for artists when in his fifties while living in his home county of Lincolnshire in England’s East Midlands.
For today’s two-hour session, Chappell is sitting for seven people, including a Scot who works in finance, a Hong Kong jewellery designer and an English dealer of Chinese antiques.
The studio is filled with easels, art books, piles of paper and boxes containing drawing materials, but Chappell – all 6ft 1in (185cm) of him – moves easily between poses. For this session, studio founder and instructor Gail Deayton asks participants to draw a variety of poses, from rapid sketches done in two to five minutes to a longer 35-minute pose.
Chappell says posing is more physically demanding than one might think, with some sittings lasting for hours. “Last week I had a three-hour sitting just for one pose … Some groups are very chatty and others totally silent,” he says.