30 before 30: No. #17 – Go to a life drawing class

As per usual, starting with the checklist…

1. Learn to ride a motorbike
2. Go skydiving
3. Learn how to ski/surf
4. Eat a vegetable that you’ve grown from seed
5. Deadlift 100kg
6. Pay for a stranger’s meal
7. Swim Boscombe to Bournemouth pier
8. Learn how to play poker
9. Do the splits
10. Have visited 30 countries
11. Cycle London to Brighton
12. Go to the opera
13. Read the bible entirely
14. Get a tattoo
15. Sleep under the stars
16. Repair a bike puncture
17. Go to a life drawing class
18. Engage in a clinical trial
19. Go to Shakespeare’s Globe
20. Go to an outdoor screening of a film
21. Sell a piece of artwork you’ve created 
22. Carve a pumpkin
23. Do a pull-up 
24. Go stand-up paddle boarding
25. Climb the three peaks
26. Write and record a song
27. Learn to play chess
28. Visit someone in prison
29. Read a famous trilogy 
30. Become a doctor

For some reason I’ve always wanted to go to a life drawing class; I couldn’t tell you why, it just sort of seems like something everyone should do at least once in their life.

My friend Fiona brought me drawing pencils and a sketch book many years ago for my birthday and it pains me to say that whilst many of my friends were being paid for furlough, Covid-19 was just about the busiest time of my life and there was the constant loud background noise from the voice in my head that constantly shouted ‘you should be studying’; a voice that I think is often loudest for post-graduate trainee doctors – so this sadly was the debut appearance for the drawing materials.

Needless to say, the sketches I created are certainly not going to help me to cross number 21 off of the list (sell a piece of artwork you’ve created)! Hopefully though, it might be the first step in resurrecting an old hobby that I might be able to develop on these next few months on the road to thirty.

I had a great time. Me and my pal Jodie rocked up and it was evident that everyone else were pros, but we had a glass of wine and apologised to the model, explaining any giggles were purely at how bad our sketches were and not at all a reflection of their fantastic modelling, the the two hours really flew. We just started with a few quick 5 min sketches to ‘warm ourselves up’ which resulted in the following monstrosity…

But after a lot of laughing about how terrible we were, a bit more practice with the charcoal, some more time and (most importantly) a bit less inhibition from the wine, this was one of the 15 min sketches I ended up doing.

The best part though was the complete and utter escape from the outside world. For two hours I forgot about the wars, and the difficulty of sick patients, and the unsettled nature of having to move for work and all the other things that swirl around my head at a hundred miles per hour every day. For a couple of hours I was just present, and for that I am so grateful, and would 100% do it again.