piusxijinping:

i stole this post from etienne but for the love of fuck look what molly crabapple has been up to lately 

I went to one of the sessions of the local branch of her empire once. I’d only once done any life drawing since Risley but I’d enjoyed it, and there was an event happening at the gaming store where I’d played some L5R sealed deck tournaments. There were props - cloaks and fur mantles, staves, lanterns. It was fantasy-themed, of course. D&D themed, specifically, some of the models cited the specifics of the characters they were portraying. (“I’m not just someone who enjoys getting naked for strangers, I also know my 6th-level wizard spells” is a very Portland sentiment.)

Some of the stuff was a little gratuitously sexual, but all well within the Frazetta/Vallejo tradition, and it’s churlish to complain about tits at a life drawing session. Race didn’t really come into it, being that everyone was thoroughly white, being that Portland. Well, I guess the Howardian notion of the barbarian. Okay, yeah, race came into it.

My main issue was that as a beginner, and for a session with such interesting props, the poses were awful short. By the time they changed I’d still be trying to get the torso proportions right, but the attendees on either side of me would have done some really beautiful, shaded work, in that volumetric sketchy style, lines wandering away like curly hair on a humid day, that you’d expect from acolytes of Molly Crabapple.

It was fun though, and afterwards I checked their website for more, maybe one without props. There was a session near my neighborhood, though on examination it was a steampunk-themed session in a kink-oriented coffeeshop/gallery, the day after a recycling event for wax fetishists where they could bring their candle stumps in to be melted down and recast.

(edit: this was all actually more recent than that link, dunno what terms you’re using that 2009 counts as “lately”)