Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Hawkins.
Hi Dan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I started modeling for drawing and painting classes when I was an 18-year-old college freshman at the University of Arkansas. Since then, I have modeled for art classes at almost all of the colleges and universities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and for a few places in other states. Over the years, I have gotten to know what poses I can do for the varying lengths of time, and I’ve gotten adept at getting back into a pose after a break. I’ve also learned that if you ignore an itch, it will eventually go away.
Modeling provides an unusual outlet in that I get to be the center of attention without ever having to say a word. And although I’m in a studio with up to twenty or more artists, I spend a lot of time in the pose alone with my own thoughts. I often use that time to work out the details of whatever novel or story I’m writing at the time.
I published my first novel, The “Volunteer,” in 2016 under the pen name D.H. Jonathan. It’s about a female college student who finds herself at the center of a sociology project studying reactions to public nudity. That subject seems fitting since I spend a lot of my time nude in art classes. My second novel, Life Models, was published in 2019 and is the story of two people who first meet when they model for an art class together. In 2022, I published a sequel to The “Volunteer” called The Girl Who Stopped Wearing Clothes. I am in the final stages of a fourth novel, a murder thriller involving a nudist couple, an FBI agent, and a serial killer.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Being a nude model involves making oneself vulnerable, not just the physical vulnerability of being nude on the platform but also being subjected to the judgment of anyone who might question why anyone would want to do that job. Because I’ve been an art model for 39 years, I’ve grown comfortable in my own skin in ways most people never could, and that comfort has just naturally made its way into the fiction I write. Because my novels promote nudity and nudism, I was asked to stop my volunteer work at my church after promoting them.
In regards to my art modeling, I’ve always struggled with balancing that with a regular full-time office job. It is so difficult to make enough money to live on just from modeling, and while raising two children, that was just impossible. So, I worked full-time and modeled as often as I could around that schedule. I have been as close to a full-time art model as I have ever been during the Fall 2023 semester.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
In terms of modeling, I’m known for doing dynamic, athletic short gesture poses and for being able to hold longer poses well. I’m extremely reliable always early for each modeling gig. In 2001, I was a contestant on the ABC game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and host Regis Philbin seemed fascinated by my nude modeling job. So I was, for about fifteen minutes, the most famous art model in America.
My three novels have had excellent reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, each of them averaging 4.4 stars or higher on Amazon.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
A lot of people ask me about how to become an art model, but few actually follow through and take those first steps. I tell people to become comfortable with their bodies, know what kind of poses they can do and for how long and to develop the willpower to hold those poses. Once they have that, I tell them to look at the schedule of classes for different schools, find out who is teaching the figure drawing or life drawing classes, and to contact the teachers directly via email. It would be beneficial to attend a life drawing session before becoming a model, but for those who aren’t artists, that can be a bit awkward. Just asking to sit in on a class can be daunting. But there’s not a training program for being an art model, just a short list of guidelines and a lot of learning as you go.
For writing novels, I suggest finding a good writer’s critique group and letting experienced people read your work. And read as much as you can, from the classics to the not-so-classic. I’ve learned a lot about writing from reading poorly written books and stories, kind of a what-not-to-do thing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dhjonathan.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dhjonathan1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authordhjonathan
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-hawkins-0662416/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DHJonathan1
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/iUlFCRDuceg?si=stlG1PSBI1aEa1ZE
- Other: http://artmodellog.blogspot.com
Image Credits
Katy Hamilton
