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Life model David Chappell, 82, at a life drawing session with amateur artists in North Point, Hong Kong, on March 10, 2021. Photo: Jonathan Wong

82-year-old life model on posing naked in front of strangers as they draw him and why he’s good at it

  • Believed to be Hong Kong’s oldest life model, David Chappell says years of discipline in Britain’s Royal Air Force helps him stay still in poses lasting hours
  • A keen artist himself, he would like to get his nude works more widely known but he says it is a challenge in Hong Kong
Art

It’s Wednesday night at the Hong Kong Art Tutoring studio in North Point and David Chappell is in a familiar position: standing naked and statue-still in front of a group of strangers. 

Chappell is a life model and at 82 is believed to be Hong Kong’s oldest. For most people, the thought of disrobing in front of strangers is out of their comfort zone. Not for Chappell. He’s at ease with being seen naked and first started posing for artists when in his fifties while living in his home county of Lincolnshire in England’s East Midlands.

For today’s two-hour session, Chappell is sitting for seven people, including a Scot who works in finance, a Hong Kong jewellery designer and an English dealer of Chinese antiques.

The studio is filled with easels, art books, piles of paper and boxes containing drawing materials, but Chappell – all 6ft 1in (185cm) of him – moves easily between poses. For this session, studio founder and instructor Gail Deayton asks participants to draw a variety of poses, from rapid sketches done in two to five minutes to a longer 35-minute pose.

Chappell, pictured here in Hong Kong, started out as a life model in his fifties while living in England. Photo: Winson Wong

Chappell says posing is more physically demanding than one might think, with some sittings lasting for hours. “Last week I had a three-hour sitting just for one pose … Some groups are very chatty and others totally silent,” he says.

Having background music helps him stay focused. “Ambient ‘new age’ music is best for me,” he says. Tonight’s playlist is more upbeat: there’s Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes, Cindy Lauper’s Time After Time and some Katy Perry hits. Some complimentary wine also helps get the creative juices flowing.

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Chappell says the secret to being a good life model is keeping still – something he is good at. “I put that down to the many years of discipline during my RAF days,” he says, referring to his time with Britain’s Royal Air Force. His first tour was to Germany in 1961, where he spent three years with a nuclear strike force team during the Cold War. He was one of the first to train on the F-4K Phantom fighter jet, the RAF’s principal air defence aircraft. 

“If you’ve ever seen Top Gun, it was like that,” he says. “I was one of the qualified weapons instructors.”

Air force life is a far cry from his routines these days. Chappell is also a keen artist himself and he tries to do at least one drawing a day. His life drawings and photographs can be seen on his Asiaseen website.

Chappell pictured in Scotland in 1971 while with the RAF. Photo: Courtesy of David Chappell
A drawing of Chappell by Kathryn Yuen of the Lamma Art Collective. Photo: Lamma Art Collective.

The long-time resident of Hong Kong’s Lamma Island has been adapting his modelling work to the “new normal” under the pandemic, such as posing virtually when strict social distancing measures were in place.

Deayton, whose impressive bronze sculptures dominate the decor at Amber restaurant in Central’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, says most models she employs have either a strong connection to art or a deep understanding of their bodies.

“Like David, some are artists themselves, allowing them to understand what the person behind the easel is looking for – dynamic, relaxed, complex poses that will be challenging and interesting to draw.

“David is an incredibly engaging character. His poses always adopt a quirkiness to them. He’s one of those people that has lived many different life experiences, and these become absorbed into his modelling.”

Chappell at a life drawing session with amateur artists in North Point. Photo: Jonathan Wong
A drawing of Chappell by Annie Knibb of the Lamma Art Collective. Photo: Lamma Art Collective

Deayton says it is important for people to draw a wide range of models. This is especially important for teenagers in the class as it helps them feel confident with their own bodies. To draw and understand normal body types means that they are not only exposed to “perfect, mythical and Photoshopped ones splashed all across magazines and social media”, she says.

For Chappell, who has also worked as a writer and photographer in Hong Kong, modelling has long been an interest: he was even featured on the December 1989 cover of the South China Morning Post’s Post Magazine. He’s also been featured in corporate videos for airline Cathay Pacific, including one shot by Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer behind In The Mood For Love and Chungking Express, and has modelled in adverts selling Korean ginseng and Chinese rice wine. In fact, it used to be something of a family affair, one which ended with tragedy.

Chappell’s son Dominic worked as a model in Hong Kong in the late 1980s and early ’90s but had his life cut short at 25 when in April 1994 he was kidnapped and executed in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge while travelling on the then notoriously dangerous Route 4 linking the capital Phnom Penh with the southern city of Sihanoukville. Also killed was Dominic’s Australian girlfriend Kellie Wilkinson and the couple’s friend, British tourist Tina Dominy. Both were just 24.

“Dom went to Cambodia in ’93 to help run a restaurant which he and Kellie eventually took over … I went to Cambodia not just for the initial search after they went missing but later for the trial of those who carried out the killings – it was a traumatic time,” he says, one that involved struggles with diplomats, secret service agents and Scotland Yard detectives.

A drawing of Chappell by John McArthur of Spitting Gecko Studio. Photo: Spitting Gecko Studio
A drawing by Chappell. Photo: Courtesy of David Chappell

As for the future, Chappell says he would like to get his work more widely known, “maybe through exhibitions here or elsewhere, and maybe make the occasional sale”.

“One challenge in Hong Kong, and online, is that my subject matter tends not to be family- or censor-friendly,” he says, referring to the paintings and photographs of himself and other models in the nude.

“On a personal level, given that I am largely self-taught, I am working at extending my command of style and technique and, as long as I can keep still long enough, to continue modelling.”

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