Models: A Talent for Others to Draw On : Art: It’s a physically and emotionally demanding job posing at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design.

David Roon was raised as a nudist.

Good thing.

He says it makes his part-time job seem so “natural.”

Roon, an actor, is one of about 160 models who sometimes pose in the buff for life-drawing, painting and sculpting classes at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. About 40 other part-timers work strictly as costume, fashion and head models for illustration and portrait classes.

The models range in age from 18 to 70, and about 60% are women.

For a few, modeling is their only job, but the majority have other work. One is a dentist; most are in the arts themselves, working, when they can, as actors, musicians or dancers.

Nobody models full time, said Nancy Lilly, supervisor of models and props at the school. “It’s such a physically and emotionally demanding job that it’s easy to get burned out,” said Lilly, 53, who modeled at the art school herself before she switched to administration in 1978.

“We don’t find them--they find us,” Lilly said. “They like the flexible hours.” Models earn from $10.25 to $12 an hour. They usually work a six-hour daytime shift or three-hour nighttime shift or both (with breaks every 25 minutes), but occasionally they work a marathon 13-hour day.

It can be tough work.

“You run the gamut from being treated like the star of the show to being emotionally abused,” Lilly said. “It doesn’t happen often but all it takes is one. . . .

“The poses can be very painful. And few people realize the difficulty a model has holding a pose on a bad day.”

The work does have its bright sides, however. Off-duty models hang out together in their robes or costumes, sitting on tables and file cabinets in Lilly’s office while sipping coffee and swapping stories.

“We’re a sort of subculture, or fraternity,” said Roon, 51, who lives in Altadena.

Pamela Treuscorff, 36, started modeling a year ago when a friend asked her to fill in. Then she left her waitressing job. “Seeing the wonderful drawings and paintings makes me feel good about myself,” she said. Occasionally her 8-year-old daughter, Gretta, models with her in illustration classes.

A favorite of illustrators is Little Bird, 70, a Sioux Indian model and actor who also began modeling as a child. In a turkey-feather bonnet and the fringed buckskins he designs himself, he makes an imposing figure for young artists to sketch.

Bradley Crable, his dark skin offsetting the colorful beads in his myriad braids, is another popular illustration and portrait model. Crable, also an actor, was tipped off to the modeling job while working out at a gym.

Models say they enjoy the artistic ambience of the school and like being part of the creative process.

In the flood-lighted studios, some reeking of turpentine, they enjoy taking center stage for the dozen or more students who, straddling wooden benches, struggle to capture the models’ line, form and essence.

And when the artists eye the models, the models are looking back.

“They don’t know we watch them. We watch them as much as they watch us,” Roon said. “We become non-persons--objects--to them. We can watch right into their souls because they really put that into their drawing.”