It wasn’t your average business meeting. I’d arrived at some salon in Islington, London, only for a totally starkers lady to start posing and preening in front of me and the male PR who I barely knew. All of a sudden, I, too, felt rather naked. With an expectant — and also naked — piece of paper on the easel before me, I found myself at my first ever life-drawing class. I glanced over at my acquaintance to follow his lead. As his charcoal plunged in to outline the breast, he caught my eye. We erupted into illicit giggles.

“It’s boring, just networking over lunch at the Wolseley,” explained my host, Rana Reeves, founder of the PR consultancy John Doe, who has subjected others to the shock of the nude. “Clubland and the bar scene are so dry. You want to do more than just go out for a drink. I want a value-added evening. Life drawing shows that you’re willing to look at things differently. In my line of work, that’s important.”

This isn’t merely about work, however. Right now, opportunities abound for art amateurs to flex their creative faculties. From July 6, Channel 4 will be airing — wait for it — naked bodies on daytime telly, with Life Class: Today’s Nude, a week-long series of life-drawing classes led by, among others, Maggi Hambling, Gary Hume and Judy Purbeck. (So thoughtful when there are all those newly redundant stuck on the sofa.) And until July 4, Artangel, an Arts Council-funded commissioning body, is hosting pop-up life-drawing classes at lunchtime in London, Southampton, Manchester and Bristol. Of course, iPhone is also in on the trend, with a new app called Brushes, which allows you to finger-paint on the touchscreen (David Hockney is a fan). You can even find life models online (at, for example, drawing-workshop.com).

So what’s with the sudden urge to sketch naked bodies? Alan Kane, the artist who masterminded Life Class, believes it’s down to the popularity of art itself. “We’re at an extraordinary time in cultural history, when people are really willing to look at art,” he says. “Artists like Tracey [Emin] doing the celebrity thing help.”

Kane argues that, while making art is as primal as producing shelters and tools, we became disconnected from it when it became expensive. “Then came a mistrust about what art was for.” The credit crunch is our friend, he says, for levelling the art world.

And what is art for? Expression, of course. But don’t the Facebook generation have enough ways to do that already? Apparently not, says Kane. “I don’t understand the point of Twitter — who wants to be bothered with other people’s sandwich filling? Art allows you to really look at the world, and yourself, on a much deeper level.”

So far, so farty, you may well be thinking — sounds like it might be time to take cover from the new pseuds and a deluge of low art. Kane disagrees: “This is about connecting with art. It doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone’s going to be an artist. The skill in life drawing is looking, not drawing.” In this age of skim culture and an apparent pandemic of attention-deficit disorder, we could all do with looking — and concentrating — a bit more.

Fortunately for the blocked artist in most of us, there’s a new type of life-drawing class that recognises the liberating effects of alcohol. The Shoreditch cocktail lounge Beach Blanket Babylon offers free weekly drop-in sessions. Next month’s Secret Garden Party festival is hosting a life-drawing arena, where revellers will also have the opportunity to model, “naked or clothed”, say the organisers.

Meanwhile, Kink Ink, a burlesque life-drawing group, puts in appearances at hip parties such as The Last Tuesday Society and White Mischief, where am-artists apparently happily join in with the (déshabillé) modelling. “We call it a drunken kindergarten,” says the Kink Ink founder Cecilia Lundqvist, an illustrator. “Fear is overcome by the fun setting and a glass or two of champagne.” She describes the “mayhem” when their art classes are so oversubscribed that participants resort to using other people’s backs to draw on. This is a rare chance for adults to express themselves, argues Lundqvist. “Nudity raises the energy. There’s always lots of flirting and interaction at our nights.”

Thinking back to my own experience, I wondered about that interaction. “It’s naughty to look at naked people, and to do that with people you don’t really know is really naughty,” Reeves acknowledges. “Art for me is just a vehicle — it’s about having fun.”

And that is just what people are doing. Putting in monthly appearances in pubs and bars in 10 British cities, including London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester, is Dr Sketchy, a “life-drawing karaoke” that uses burlesque dancers and variety performers as models. “There’s no right or wrong,” says its high-camp London compere, Dusty Limits. “You don’t go to karaoke because you’re an amazing singer. You go to hang out with your mates and drink booze, and you get to express yourself creatively. In our classes, you’re not allowed to erase, because that implies art has to be perfect.”

The folk at Dr Sketchy believe that, as well as the catharsis of expression, using this dormant part of our brain is good for us.

The actor Ian Kelly agrees. Last year, at the National Theatre, he played Robert Lyon in The Pitman Painters. To prepare for the part, he packed himself off to life drawing because his character has to sketch a portrait on stage.

“I find life drawing very zen, very contemplative,” says Kelly. “It’s like a weird, silent group therapy. You’re doing something very intimate, and also technical — it takes you to quite abstract places. You can lose yourself, like you can in music.” Time, then, to embrace your artistic freedom.

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