Media Credit: Figure drawing by Liz Crawford Another drawing from Chris Campbell's Drawing I class. This lesson involved using color ink to engage mood and create movement.

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We've all had that "naked" dream. You go to school, you're in class, and you're naked. Even worse, people notice.

So it takes a special person to get up in front of a group of strangers completely naked, and say, "Here, paint me."

At UVM's art department, and in majority of art studios around the country, nude models are often used to help teach students how to draw the nude body, said Chris Campbell, a Senior Lecturer in the Art Department.

The number of models who have volunteered varies from semester to semester, Campbell said.

"We have usually about 10-15 [nude models] at a time," she said, usually working alone or with one other model.

Generally, these models are employed for a five-week period for a specific figure drawing class said Campbell.

But what's it like?

Keri Johnson, a UVM alumni, said that posing times can run as long as six hours (in a 20 minutes on, five minutes off format) or as short as 30 seconds. However, sometimes, "You just hold it till you can't hold it anymore," Johnson said.

Most of us couldn't imagine being under that kind of physical stress, being perfectly still for hours on end and being completely naked all at the same time.

But for both Johnson and fellow model, David Helfand, although it starts off difficult, it gets easier.

"It's not awkward," Helfand said. "If anything, it's just the opposite. The first class each semester is a little bit of an adrenaline rush."

However, according to both models and instructors, there are certain other things that help nude models.

Many of the models are dancers or practice yoga or other forms of meditation, giving them an intimate connection with their bodies, Camp¬bell said.

Johnson, who is a yoga instructor, believes that modeling nude "made [her] far more comfortable with [her] body and with [her] sexuality."

This comfort level may explain why there are many more women modeling than men.

At UVM there about three male models compared to about 10 female models Campbell said.

Johnson seems to believe that the disproportion is be¬cause of "men's comfortability with their own body and feeling objectified."

A lot of men may be wondering about embarrassing situations, such as getting erections during a session. Helfand, however, seemed not to be too worried.

"It's my body, no excuses. I use meditation and I can control my body," Helfand said.

However the idea of bearing your all to a group of strangers in a closed room could cause worry about what happens outside of the classroom.

But Johnson hasn't had any trouble. "For the past three semesters, every semester, I've had at least one of my yoga students in a class," she said.

"My roommates think it's funny to see paintings of me naked in Williams. They tease me a little for that," Helfand said.

Oftentimes, models will see students outside of the classroom as well.

"I was at a party once and I ran into someone and we tried to figure out where we knew each other from, until it was like 'Oh! You've seen me naked!'" Helfand said.

But what exactly does it take to be a nude model?

Campbell said that there are three main things:

One, you have to want to do it.

Two, you have to be totally comfortable with yourself. Usually, experience in dance or yoga helps.

Finally, you have to be professional. "It's about visual qualities rather than sexual," she said.

If you think that you have to be a runway star or a bombshell to do this, Campbell said that's not true.

"We have had really big models before", Campbell said, "one was around 300 pounds."Curves, she said, are actually easier to draw.

In fact, there is great agreement between the models and instructors that women are easier to draw then men simply because male muscle definition is hard to capture correctly, whereas female curves are much easier to put on paper.

After speaking with the people involved, both those clothed and unclothed agree that a good sense of humor and a personable façade seem to make the task of being the only naked person in the room bearable and sometimes even fun.

It generates plenty of innuendo, but posing nude is a serious - and surprisingly unsexy - discipline.

'I DIDN'T recognise you with your clothes on" is a line that life models hear with sniggering frequency. Yet it is one of the few occasions, except perhaps when visiting the doctor or the beauty parlour, where stripping off has absolutely no come-on quality. In an age where everything, from the sale of shoes to the drinking of coffee, is sexualised, it's refreshingly innocent to spend a couple of hours painting a naked body without a hint of carnal allure.

Not that I can speak for the rest of the class, but at 10.30 on a sunny morning at Princes Hill Community Centre in North Carlton, the group of mainly middle-aged men and women in the life drawing class don't seem particularly lascivious.

It's all silence and the earnest scratch of charcoal and pen or the slap of paint. A bell pings and Maria the model transforms from Patience on a monument to a woman pulling on a purple sarong and heading for the kitchen and a quick cup of coffee. After a group exhalation, a stretch and a quick squint at the work in hand, the rest of the group does the same.

This is the long-pose class, where a model keeps the same posture for two hours, with breaks every 20 minutes. Over two weeks, it allows artists the chance for in-depth work.

The group today is a mixed bunch of recreational artists and professionals, many retired or self-employed.

Garry Anderson, from Ballarat, fills a small notebook with densely hatched sketches. As a professional artist, he takes life-drawing classes three times a week. When he was a student at Claremont School of Art in Western Australia, his obsession with the body meant he spent most of each day drawing the human form. Such concentration can be gruelling, especially for those who haven't done it before.

"I remember at one class there was a retired farmer from Esperance," he says. "At the end of the three-hour session, he said he had spent his life doing hard labour but had never felt so exhausted."

For Anderson it is akin to a musician practising scales. It is about keeping one's eye in. For others it is a more passionate, even spiritual experience.

"If you're interested in drawing the soul, even two weeks with the same model isn't enough," explains Terry, a regular at the class, who sees life drawing as a nude portrait more than as a study of curves and angles.

Life drawing has a venerable tradition. From the time of classical Greece, the naturalistic representation of the human form has been central to sacred and profane art. Even in the most buttoned-up eras in Western civilisation, artists have got away with representing the naked form by dressing it, metaphorically speaking, in classical myth and religious allegory (all those birthday-suited sinners writhing in hell).

With the Pre-Raphaelites, the Victorian era of model as muse and femme fatale began, and the women who modelled as tragic heroines and semi-clad sirens became famous (and often married the artists).

Nudity has lost shock value but it can get lonely posing on a plinth. Maria Sangiorgi, Egyptian dance teacher and therapist, co-founded the Life Model Society with Kay Osborne in 1989. It was initially a way to meet others in the field who then, as now, modelled casually and made up their own rules. Today the society provides lists of models for schools, art societies and individuals, and sets out terms and conditions. Good ventilation, a 10-minute break every 20 minutes and privacy are a must, and the rules include no touching and no poses "inappropriate for serious artistic pursuit".

Female models are called for about twice the rate of males, says Adrian Maiolla, acting president and sometime model.

Although any exhibitionism is eradicated immediately, extroversion of a dramatic kind is encouraged. Male models are especially keen on the action shot. Maiolla favours a series of sporty poses, lunging, leaping and arching, sometimes with props. Elaborate re-creations of famous paintings are also attempted from time to time.

I am shown a photograph of what appears to be Edouard Manet's 1863 painting Dejeuner sur l'herbe, but turns out to be four models and a picnic basket at Heide, circa 1994.

The king of the tableau is an octogenarian known for the purposes of this article as the Duke. At Easter time he has arrived at class with a life-sized crucifix and an attitude to match. With another stalwart of the Life Model Society, he has restaged the beheading of Anne Boleyn. Were they nude? "No, we wore hoods," says Duke, adding that the axe was wooden. "It's all a bit of a laugh," he says. "After a bit you crave to do something a bit different." He has been modelling for more than 20 years, a hobby that started when a friend said he had a well-shaped head.

A couple of kilometres away in North Melbourne, the artist and teacher Ted May runs a more structured series of classes, giving tips and guiding his students where he sees fit. The Thursday night "epicurean" classes take place in a raffish studio with a 19th century feel, enhanced by a scattering of classical plaster casts and its location next to a brothel.

The small group includes noted artist Louise Lavarack and Weng-Ho Chong, the designer for Text Publishing. Chong has been coming for five years. Does his life work feed into his day job? "Yes, I've used life drawing on covers," he confirms, citing the current edition of Kate Holden's sex-trade-and-heroin memoir In My Skin as a recent example.

In an occupation dominated by computer design, the old-fashioned discipline of drawing the nude keeps him anchored. "Life drawing is useful for maintaining a certain sense of what to do when you don't have a keyboard in front of you; long gone are the days when design involved sitting in a corner shaving a pencil," he says.

What makes a good model? Chong, like several others, talks of the model's need to have a sense of their body, to be lithe.

Di Colk, an artist and teacher from the Princes Hill class, says it's helpful if models have done yoga, tai chi or dance. "An ability to keep still is very important," she says. "And a nice personality, as you will be spending two to three hours with them."

Maria, who has been modelling for 30 years, mentions the Greek sculptor Praxiteles, and says a model with proportions conforming to the golden mean is easier to draw.

The Life Model Society provides posers of all shapes and ages to educational institutions, community courses and private clubs. Many models also advertise independently. It's a thriving scene and, as a visit to any gallery will attest, whatever the fashion in art, the naked human form continues to fascinate.

I have a friend that, whilst he was at the university, he took an art class that had nude models pose and he drew the subject.  He gave me the drawing as a gift to me.  I wish i had known at the time about the nude modelling, because i would have gladly loved to have taken part in it.