My painting studios met twice a week for two hours and my teacher encouraged me to enroll in a life-drawing class as well. This meant just what it sounds like – we were drawing life – human bodies, of different shapes and sizes. We drew from live models, both male and female, clothed and unclothed. Most of the models were other art students who were paid a modest fee to strike various poses that lasted sometimes five minutes, sometimes twenty. Then, after a brief rest, a new pose would be presented. The class members worked mostly with charcoal on large sheets of newsprint. (The word “newsprint” refers to the inexpensive paper that newspapers are printed on and has nothing to do with the ink of the print itself, in spite of what many people seem to believe.)
Some of the first models were simply class members, unpaid. We took turns posing for portraits, sometimes with hats, shawls or other props. The first “real” models we encountered wore costumes or form-revealing leotards, but there came a day when a young woman climbed onto the platform, shed her robe and struck a pose, totally naked. I had been expecting this and soon recovered from my discomfort and began drawing the figure. At first, we had only a few minutes to sketch the figure’s basic anatomy and no time for details. I had by then accepted the fact that I’d never be able to draw the human figure realistically if I only saw it covered in clothing and understood the necessity of seeing how the muscles and bones worked together at rest and while in various attitudes.
Coming from a family of all girls, and the high school shower room after gym classes, I found I was fairly comfortable with nude female models. I was totally astonished and extremely uncomfortable when the first male model – a fellow student from an art history class – appeared wearing only a jock-strap. That crude cover-up was infinitely more distracting than total nudity, though one of the women students from a strict religious community seemed to feel otherwise. I recall her saying, “I’m not supposed to even look at that – how can I possibly draw it?”
By mid-semester, I had actually finished a painting of one of the female models in the painting studio. As had been my habit, I had painted it on brown paper but it progressed so well I knew I could not discard it. Once the paint had dried, I intended to mount it on one of the pieces of Upson panel I had purchased. It was a nude. The model had casually hung her robe on a corner of a nearby easel and it made a colorful background for her relaxed, partially seated pose on a wooden stool. Mr. Ludens later informed me that the Art Students’ Guild had selected my painting to be included in an upcoming exhibition representing all levels of the art department student body, but that I would have to get it framed within the next week or two in order for it to be included. A friend who had a car, tools and the necessary skills consented to frame the painting for me and I got it delivered to the show site on time.
When the next issue of The Daily Iowan arrived at the dorm, my painting appeared on the front page, in black and white as part of the announcement of the exhibit. I was pleased but puzzled that they should choose a work from a beginner rather than a more accomplished upperclassman. Was my painting really that good? Not really, I was told, but most of the other entries were abstract or impressionistic and didn’t reproduce as recognizable in black and white. The next issue of The Daily Iowan featured a letter-to-the-editor bewailing the fact that “the Art Guild had to put a picture of a naked woman in the paper to get people to come to their exhibit.” I responded with a defensive letter of my own and, when a friend referred the incident to the Des Moines Register, they sent columnist Herb Owens to interview me. He listened sympathetically to my story and took a photo of me posing with the “scandalous” painting. It was a couple of weeks before the article appeared in the Des Moines Register. I was disappointed but not surprised when the article showed me with the painting – cropped to show little below the model’s chin.