I Love Dr. Sketchy

I love Dr. Sketchy! For $12 (unwaged) I can spend 3 hours at Mighty Mighty drawing some of the sexiest, fun-loving models around. Rachel Rouge runs it in Wellington and she keeps it spicy with a variety of entertainment for her artists. Yesterday, we had two pole dancers and a blue-tongued skink. The skink crawled up my chest and licked my neck (earning my vote for favourite model). Usually, the models keep more professional distance than that and strip tease from a safe distance. (Sigh*)

The shows have included lots of yummy burlesque, some funny cabaret, drag queens, belly dancing, circus acts and mexican wrestling... The performances bring out the life and personality of the models so that when the time comes to draw them I feel like I can really bring out their character. Its fun, bright, dynamic and colourful and I feel so lucky we have such a great event for artists every month in Welly. THANKS DR. SKETCHY (I love you x)

I love the artists who come too - to chat, relax, have a drink, whistle and cheer when the acts get raunchy, and fall into that collective trance/zone when the poses are set and the models are laid out for our creative pleasure. I don’t know if there is a collective noun for artists... when I googled it I got ‘a sketch of artists’, ‘a starvation of artists’ (and worse). But in the sun-drenched Mighty Mighty bar at 4 on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by pink velvet curtains, mirror ball reflections and feathered, sequined, half-naked models... I feel like I’m part of a ‘perve’ of artists. And not in a dirty strip joint way. Just in a very focused, thank-you for letting me absorb you with my eyeballs, ‘flâneur at rest’ kind of way.