NAKED as the day they were born, the pair twisted their bodies into artful pose, as the room-full of strangers set to work studying and sketching their breathing sculpture.

Today is life drawing day in Pawlett. It's my first, a double-whammy, double model session, with a male and female model interlocking their shapes for this artsy bunch's benefit.

As life models go, Dave and Jackie are two of the best in the business. Between them they've grabbed the attention of tycoon Charles Saatchi and enigmatic spray artist Banksy.

Starting off with short-burst, ten minute poses, it took no time to learn that life drawing is a tough gig - and that's not even thinking about the models laid bare.

For the drawers, it's an unforgiving discipline that reveals all the flaws in your skillset.

However it's liberating to look - and I mean, really look - minute after minute, at an unfamiliar human body, for what it is (no strings attached).

Each shape-shift is a new challenge, the pair conspiring to highlight sinews and clenched muscles, ripples and curves, bums and breasts, professional at all times.

Model Jackie Evans, a married mum-of-two from Taunton, chats to me during the coffee break.

“I've been working as a life model now for 18 years, for photographers, sculptors, painters. I'd always wanted to do fashion modelling, but left it too late and had children.

"Then I saw an advert seeking an art model and applied, and went from there. Now I'm a regular at SCAT and Bridgwater College, and I've been to Richard Huish.

"I love the job; I've been doing it for a long time now. For me, it's the people you meet.”

Jackie was Banksy's model for his provocative life-size 'Scales of Justice' sculpture, in dressing gown, thong and racy thigh-length boots. Robbie Williams has also bought a local artist's take on her form.

Jackie says: “It's a nice feeling that artists are gaining their inspiration from you, to use in their creativity. I am curious about how they depict me, but I'm sensitive to the artists. Some people are very nervous about their work and would rather you didn't look.”

Then it was literally back to the drawing board, all of us etching and sketching in comfortable silence, with nothing but the whirr of the heater, and occasional puffs of effort. Jackie's foot proved my own particular nemesis. And with different poses lasting from 30 minutes to an hour, the models' stamina was amazing.

Yet this was small fry compared to what Dave Clarke, 77 Modelling's director, undertook for the sculpture Saatchi would end up swiping for a quarter of a million.

“Sculptor Michael Wade was commissioned to recreate the first man being accidentally electrocuted. It required me to curve over backwards, and it's life size and a quarter, cast in bronze, and was shown in Turin around 2006,” says Dave.

“It was a ridiculously hard piece. Even 15 minute stints were hard enough. I was curved over three or four iron bars, which had been curved exactly to my spine. When I went back in two months' time, he had the sculpture there, and wanted to take definition for my rib cage.”

So what's the draw from the artist's perspective? Retired Musgrove surgeon, Julian Upton, says it's about doing something “completely different” to the day job.

“Being a surgeon is all-pervading. To be able to do art, you've got to be at peace with the world, and with yourself, and you're not at peace with yourself if you're a surgeon. It's all bloody stress, and Musgrove is a very big hospital.

"I would have to draw my operations, however, because if anyone went back on one, they then had a drawing to see what I'd done, otherwise it'd be like mystery Box 13 from Take Your Pick.”

Ex-architect Damien Parsons, 86, who has been life drawing for near-on 60 years, says it's “marvellous”. “For once, you have a chance to draw people while they're keeping still.”

Session over, it seemed to me a grand irony that today, life drawing - as the gently curious study of naked human flesh - despite being age-old, is revolutionary.

Just think of what's dominated public thought in recent weeks. Concerns over sexting; the routine grilling of Miley Cyrus swinging, unclothed, on her Wrecking Ball; the debate over whether or not Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines music video is out-and-out sexism or tongue-in-cheek.

In a culture where nudity and sex go hand-in-hand, and where female nudity in particular gets a complex rep, life drawing cuts through that white noise.

As a life modelling entrepreneur, Dave considers himself at the wheel of a much-needed culture change, which, he says, must start with the younger generation.

“I'd like to live long enough to one day see a Somerset school of life drawing grow,” he says. “I want to try to create this cultural thing that takes people away from the fear of nudity into creativity; to create wonderful sculptures at a young age, bringing young people into the arts to create artworks like Michelangelo's Adam. Nowadays we're lacking creativity in this field.”

Bringing human bodies into an art space reminds us to see them for what they are. A fact of existence; eternally more interesting than just being a clotheshorse for fashion.

· 77 Modelling holds life drawing sessions every Tuesday in Minehead between 11am and 1pm at Sacred Heart Church hall, at £10. Upcoming classes in Pawlett village hall are on Saturday, January 11 (10am to 3pm, £14). A festival of life drawing, Where There's Life, comes to Pawlett village hall and pavilion from April 26-27, 2014.