Yep, you read it correctly, we had our last session at the Draw Brighton studio on Saturday 2nd August 2025. Our first home, the setting of Drawversity’s origin story. You’ve probably heard the story hundreds of times, with a well written copied and pasted synopsis paragraph. But I’m going to tell you again, fresh from the memory bank. Let me take you back to April 2019.
I had been back from living in China for about three months at this point, I had gone out their to build my portfolio in hopes to come back and hit the ground running in being a fully fledged self-employed artist. Obviously it was a lot harder to get my entire months income from art, with no direction let alone being established. I had been working at my local pub The Ancient Mariner, for a little cash in hand (shhhh!) but as the weeks went by they had to put their foot down and put me on the books, I panicked down the phone to my manager at the time “No no! don’t do that, don’t give me anymore shifts, I’ll figure it out”. I was in debt with my mum for my ticket home and two months behind on my rent. I was desperate to have come back and take my dream seriously. I recalled a conversation I had with a friend a few years prior, who told me about Life Modelling, at the time I had no idea of life modelling, let alone something you can get paid from. She sold it to me with three points, 1. The hourly rate is great 2. The hours are short giving you time in the day to work on your own projects 3. you can say no to a job without giving a reason. I was sold. Anything but a 9-5 please.
I’d been to one life drawing class in my life; I’ve always been one for trying new things, and I had been looking for something new for mum and I to do. So I booked us a session at Draw at one of Jake Spicer sessions. It had been maybe a year or possibly two since that one session. I emailed Jake asking if there was any opportunity to come and try Life Modelling, to my surprise (then, not now I know Jake) he’d remembered me and was very happy to book me in to one of his evening sessions to model for the first time.
After my first few session I was booked in to model for a previous Draw tutor; Liv, they asked me if I was serious about modelling, I responded with a vigorous nod, they wrote a list of tutors and studios, from that point, I modelled every single day for the rest of the year. Within 6 months I was able to pay mum, and start a savings account. I also had the mental and physical space to create and work on building my career. Of course, little did I know, this would be my career for the next [ONGOING] years.
[Continue reading about my Life Model career at Draw in blog: My Time at Draw Brighton]
About three months into my Life Model career, I had noticed that there wasn’t a lot of diversity in the art drying in the studios, and I was definitely getting booked a lot. My business-slash-creative mind started spinning. As I sat and stared and listened, I heard artists struggle with getting the tone of my skin correct and see their hands jitter for fear of painting me in an offensive light. Well, I thought to myself, they just need a little practice in painting a range of skin palettes and facial features. hmmm, I said to myself, what if there was a class that created a safe space for diverse people to try modelling, a place where they feel in control of the narrative… hmmm, maybe they don’t know about this job because of the generational expectations, my mind started whirring “that’s twenty minutes, Jade would you like to have a stretch?”.
I put an email together to send to Jake, asking him what he thought about the idea of me running an untutored session at Draw that introduced more diverse people to Life Modelling, I had the USP of the class not being tutored for the artist, but for the model. Jake was thrilled at the idea, he knew that it was needed in the popular practice of Life Drawing in our city, but no one had yet had the initiative to start it. Jake being Jake, it had crossed his mind many times, but knew that a white man might not be the right person to create that truly safe space… enter, Jade. Still figuring out a way to navigate headhunting potential models, I planned my first two sessions at Draw for October 2019 with two already professional Black Life Models; Priss and Trib.
I’m having to sit here as I write and try to recall the exact plan for these events and why I came to the choices I made, one being that one session would be costumed and the other nude. I think it was to see what would be most popular… So Trib’s class was nude, and Priss’s class was clothed where she wore traditional African clothing. I still have the paintings I did of each session up in my bedroom.
The first two sessions went brilliantly! So Jake and I discussed starting regular sessions in the new year, spring 2020 in fact… well we all know what happened then don’t we…
Even though we were hit with a halt in work and projects. Jake, being as business-savvy as he is, had set up a Patreon and booked a load of models to pose for art reference photos. He had actually done a three year lockdown plan and set up a way to create an income for people who were full time models. On top of that, he had created an opportunity for the word of Drawversity get out there for when we got back into in-person sessions, with a Drawversity photo set, with me as Art Director.
It was an incredibly successful shoot and the images were used by an artist, who years later did an exhibition with them, the concept of Drawversity was playing out exactly as planned.
Two years later, and we have our first of many sessions booked into the Draw calendar, March 2022, for the last Saturday of every month. The advert for models was out and so it was time to start collecting details and booking people in to model! As I got back to modelling myself, I started to use the sessions to be more aware of what I was doing, the poses I chose and the patterns in which I modelled, I used my own experience to figure out a way to teach others.
Most of the models weren’t ready to go full nude yet so I made the class either nude or clothed, it was at the comfort of the model. Funny thing though, thinking about it now, at one point only a handful of months into it, Jake received an email asking if it was okay to bring their daughter along, she was around 12 at the time so was unsure about the nudity, to get the numbers up, and since the models were more comfortable with it, and there not being many regular clothed sessions running at Draw, Jake and I agreed that it would be so introductory for the models, that they would be clothed. The parent that emailed in, Marie and her daughter, came regularly and became close session friends of mine!
As time went on we went back to nude as clothed session participant numbers were dwindling and, I felt it was time to immerse the models I had into the true art of Life modelling and bring them to the next level of Life Modelling. They now had an understanding of the environment and knew that it was a safe space not with judgement, but for art.
As well as Drawversity, I also ran other art sessions at Draw Brighton, it truly was a space in which I could explore my creativity and have the support to see if I could turn them into a livelihood. I even used the space to shoot a music video!
Jake also introduced me to the two who run ESEA Life Drawing; Kelly and Wingkei, we did a collaborative session with two models and a bond was made. you can read the blog here.
As the months and years went by, Drawversity expanded to different studios and spaces around East Sussex. Bringing not only another form of art to the BIPOC people of Brighton who were also striving to find another income in the arts whilst working on other formats of creativity, but a safe space to explore something that you can only experience whilst life modelling. It’s a deep meditation, but with a whole other level of being studied whilst doing so, to be so with yourself in a room full of people, with no brands or fabric illustrations that speaks for who you are, but your bare self.
For the last session I had Priss – full circle – model. We had many old and new faces,
If it wasn’t for Jake, his faith in me, my idea and motivations, I wouldn’t have had such a secure foundation and incredible guidance, to bring this idea to fruition. So, not only for my career in Life Modelling, but for also teaching me how to be a great host and for giving me a safe space to practice art and express myself, I can’t express enough, my thanks to Jake and the whole tutor team at Draw for everything, you have been a fantastic work family and I love you all so much.
If you would like to share what Drawversity at Draw Brighton did for you as either a model or artist, comment in the box below this blog.
You can still go to Draw run sessions in and around Brighton and Hove, as well as tutored courses, there is still a weekly Thursday untutored session at The Open House pub. And as always, you can keep drawing with the whole Draw family with the online sessions and regular art reference photos on the Draw Brighton Patreon. If you would like to find the other studios that Drawversity is running, please go to the Drawversity page on this website.
Jade Hylton 
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