the_red_scimitar

My GF has been doing this for close to 10 years. She also has a vintage (clothes) store, and in general is a hell of a visual artist. But the bulk of her income comes from modeling. It's kind of fascinating to hear about this, and I've met a number of artists who've painted or drawn her, and seen a lot of interesting works with her as the model.

Also interesting is going to parties - lots of artist's models and artists. Very interesting crew.

She takes the job of "being a muse" very seriously, and is annoyed when she models for a class where the instructor doesn't really provide any value to his/her students.

Yeah - the GF has been doing this long enough to know who's real and who's not. She just won't work for people who don't take what she does seriously, are rude or inconsiderate to the models, underpay, take too long to pay, etc.

Luckily, here in LA, there's quite a lot of demand for models. One interesting public: professional animators. Several studios have weekly/monthly drawing workshops for their in-house animators, just to keep their skills sharp. A lot of these are speed poses, where they have 5 or 10 minutes to draw, then the pose changes.

Of course, art schools and such. Cal Arts is a big one.

She doesn't do "drawing parties", where anybody can pay to come in and draw, as it's really a party first. But drawing workshops, run by artists who give a damn, are fine.

I've worked with another insurance-based industry: collision repair, where 90% or more of a shop's income comes from insurance payments. Thus, like in medical, insurance gets to dictate what procedures are used, and how much they'll pay for them. Shops have to submit a detailed procedure, using software provided by one of (typically) three information providers that covers what every type of repair is typically supposed to cost in terms of time and parts. This software assures the markups are per the insurance company's terms.

And so, of course, just as in medical billing, "coding" the repair - selecting the items to be done, from the software - is an "art" - maximizing the profit of the shop, by gaming the system. Not necessarily fraudulent, although in my opinion, it certainly could be viewed that way.

Or maybe the company it worked for just moved one day...

LA here, with friends in NY. Definitely would use, as would they.