Life drawing - pregnant life

I've been forgetting to post my Mondays' life drawings at UWA, where does the time go? A few weeks ago I mentioned looking forward to drawing Kyah, who is one of the best life models. I had never drawn her before, and when she came along, she was sporting a seven month pregnant belly! How generous, professional and beautiful it was of Kyah to pose as a pregnant life model, I know I felt lucky.

Now I'm going to admit something not nice. I think pregnancy is gross. Whenever I've heard people say women are the most beautiful when they are pregnant, my mind gets a broken link- cannot compute-what? The swollen belly, the pain, mostly the swollen belly, in honesty it disgusts me.

When I shattered my ulna and radius (forearm) ten years ago, my arm instantly swelled to double the size. DOUBLE THE SIZE! Look at your forearm right now and can you imagine it double the width?? It was the most disgusting (not to mention painful) thing I have ever seen. Looking at it made me reel. That's one thing they never show you in action movies. When characters break bones, in reality there would be intense, unimaginable swelling. It is so ugly in the most painful way.

So maybe this has something to do with it. I shudder inside when I think that I will inevitably have to go through pregnancy one day and really do not look forward to it, and I'm happy to put it off for as long as possible. Sometimes I daydream about working out a method to bypass the whole pregnancy thing. Super premature baby? Test tube baby? Surrogate birth mother?

Don't get me wrong, new life is beautiful, I think it's wonderful when my girlfriends and women I know are pregnant, and I really, truly admire them. You know the pain, the bloating, the heaviness, the kicking, the sleeplessness, the discomfort, the swelling... I just don't understand where the beauty is...

But drawing Kyah that evening was great. Maybe it was how with such ease and grace at which Kyah moved, stood and sat as she held each pose for us. She looked so relaxed, comfortable and content. Maybe it's because I love life drawing so much and feel peacefully occupied each time I find that clean, curved line with my pen. The whole swollen, pregnant figure really was beautiful to draw. And possibly, my mind might have eased a tiny bit, on the notion of the whole pregnant belly thing.