The Bigger the Better

Nude Nite had so many sketching opportunities, that it was hard to focus my attention. A model lay prone as a female body painter scrolled intricate red patterns on her body. A tower of wire armature nudes spiraled upward with the artist continuing to add figures. Nude winged angels soared overhead. An aerialist spun herself on satin streamers from the rafters. I finally couldn’t resist sketching as Stephen Palladino worked on an urban mural of a very big and busty woman. The wall was inside the abandoned warehouse dividing the two huge halves of the Nude Nite exhibit. A forklift was needed to raise him up as he added a tattoo of legs spinning around a heart on the busty mural’s shoulder.

Since there was art on all the walls, I had to sit in the middle of the room, much like the guy seated on the red bucket. This meant plenty of people became curious, looking over my shoulder. I had to snap out of my “zone” fairly often to say “thank you” or to crack a joke so I could get back to work. To the left of the mural, behind that green partition was a large wooden table decorated with intricate metal work and divided into sections. A bottle was hard mounted to the table with an iron cage. The whole contraption had the looks of a Medieval torture device. The bottle was spun and a woman)s muscular boyfriend grabbed her by the hips, trying to position her as the bottle came to a stop. She laughed and leaned against him. They kissed passionately when the bottle stopped. I walked up to the table to see what the fuss was about. Written in the partitions, were instructions like “Nibble my ear”, “Talk dirty to me”, some I can’t repeat since there might be children reading, and of course the classic, “Kiss me.” I kept moving to make sure the bottle didn’t land on me. I didn’t see who had spun it after all.

I had a long drive back to Orlando from Tampa, and I decided three sketches were enough for one night, so I hit the road. The line to get in to Nude Nite was incredibly long. The evening was just getting started for many couples.