I often spend Thursday nights at Peter Lankas’ life drawing sessions in Newcastle. Last Thursday was an incredibly hot evening, I’d spent the morning doing some concreting, so by the time 9pm arrived I felt like nap time was long overdue. The class finishes at 9.30pm, and we had one more pose before everyone packed up and went home.

I had one last piece of paper left in my favourite sketchbook. It was actually a black piece of paper, right at the end of the book, kind of like a title page in a book. The previous day I’d primed it with some leftover reddish-brown paint. Tired, not caring, wanting to finish off the book, and not waste precious time with a model, I scribbled away with a black pen then packed up and went home. Strangely enough, it ended up being my favourite drawing of the night – there’s a frenetic looseness and lack of fussiness that you only seem to get when the conscious mind has checked out. White highlights were added later in the studio at home. I don’t usually name life drawings but this one’s called ‘beautiful girl’.