This Singaporean has been drawn nude by thousands. Here’s why artists keep calling him

In my years as a journalist, I have interviewed plenty of people. It should go without saying that I have never seen any of them naked.

That is, until I was faced with Mr Lim Kim Hian – standing tall and baring it all in front of me and 12 undergraduate art students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology campus in Punggol.

The 63-year-old walked up to an elevated platform in the centre of the room with nothing but a towel around his waist. With a single nod from the art professor, Mr Lim swiftly disrobed and struck a pose.

One arm rested loosely against his hip. The other hovered over the back of his head. His body angled slightly to the left while he fixed his eyes on the distance.

The students went to work on their canvases in near silence while Mr Lim stood ramrod still.

I tried briefly to imagine how nerve-wracking the experience must be – and then I remembered that this was far from his first rodeo: he has been a life model for more than 25 years.

"Some call me 'the legendary Kim'," he remarked to me in jest.

Among my friends, such a moniker would be a joke. Yet, Mr Lim, known as "Kim" in these circles, is a familiar figure to generations of artists in Singapore, some of whom recalled sketching him as a student, before working with him professionally when they became teachers.

It was just a dozen of us there on that Wednesday, but that class was one of seven gigs he had scheduled for that week alone.

"How many people do you think have drawn you nude?" I asked him afterwards.

He didn't hesitate: "Thousands."

Many people may think that nude life modelling is a simple gig, Mr Lim told me back at his three-room flat in Queensway. As long as your skin is thick enough, all you have to do is strip naked, stand there and then cash your cheque.

This assumption is also the reason why exhibitionists occasionally approach him, curious about getting into the work themselves. He is quick to discourage them.

It only takes minutes of watching Mr Lim in action to realise that this belief of it being easy work is grossly misguided.

THE ART OF KEEPING STILL

The veteran model choreographs his poses carefully, tailoring them to match the technical ability of whoever is drawing him.

The work involves posing either partially clothed or fully nude, depending on the needs of the classes.

For beginner classes, he sticks to standing poses. Advanced students get more variety: seated, dynamic, or contrapposto – an asymmetrical stance.

"Some poses are not difficult, but some seemingly easy poses are painful," Mr Lim said.

For instance, a layperson may think nothing of sitting on a stool.

"It's just your skin against a hard, wooden surface. The first contact is comfortable, but after 10, 15 minutes, when your bones push and compress down on your skin, the pain sets in.

"You get numbness, butterflies, pins and needles. Then you don't feel your legs at all and your muscles start to ache," he said, adding that there is no pose where there is no pain. 

The longest he's ever held a single position? Two-and-a-half hours. 

"If you break the pose before the time is up, the students or artists might get a bit annoyed and it's hard for them to get the momentum back. They are expecting you to stay there," he said. 

"And when you break deliberately without warning, it's considered a bit rude."

So if the model does it all in one go, the artists tend to feel very grateful after that, he added.

"That's how I'm remembered as a model: I can endure."

What happens when there are times you need to slightly shift during a pose? 

"For me, I will relax that (individual body) part, then go back to the same pose as soon as possible."

Others may alert the lecturer or artist and they will mark out positions on the platform with tape, so that the model will go back to an almost identical pose later after a break or rest.

PROFESSIONAL MODEL, MODEL PROFESSIONAL

It is not by chance that Mr Lim has remained so sought-after in almost three decades of life-modelling work.

Back in the day, a common practice for art schools was to stick posters around hostels, hoping to lure backpackers – people who tended to need quick cash and were more open to nudity – into modelling gigs.

However, tourists were not long-term solutions, and those who answered the call were not always reliable either. Models would arrive late or not show up at all. Some clearly hadn't grasped what the job required.

Mr Dominic Chang, the art lecturer at DigiPen who had allowed me to observe his class, put it bluntly: Whether a drawing session for nude life art succeeds depends heavily on the model's professionalism and experience.

"If the model is phoning it in, you're better off drawing from a photo," he said. 

"But if a model is engaging, then the class will be, too. Ask them to give you three to five poses and they will deliver. That's what models like Kim bring."

Beyond educational institutions, Mr Lim also works with independent studios, solo artists and – occasionally – hen parties. These social events are less about artistic study and more about novelty, but he stays professional nonetheless.

The other thing that immediately stands out about Mr Lim is his "Michelangelo's David" build – for a 63-year-old no less. 

Ms Lee Yeh Woey, manager at Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Design and Media, who has worked with the life model for more than two decades as both a casual student and an art lecturer, said that Mr Lim has always been as fit as a fiddle.

"For someone to start off as a model in his mid-30s and to work until now while maintaining the physique he has ... that requires a lot of discipline."

When asked, Mr Lim said that he doesn't have a specific diet regimen ("I want to enjoy my food"), but being a bachelor gives him the freedom to head to the gym multiple times a week so that he keeps his body in shape. Keeping fit also helps him hold poses for longer.

In recent years, he has also started having protein shakes to help maintain his muscle mass, which has naturally dropped off as he ages. 

It has never just been about looking good for the canvas, though. "I believe in staying healthy." 

RETRENCHED TWICE, DESPERATE FOR CASH

So how does someone become "legendary" at something like this? What motivates someone to choose to make a career out of life modelling?

In the middle of the storm that was the Asian Financial Crisis, Mr Lim was retrenched twice – both times from media production companies where he had been a designer adept at using Paintbox, a once cutting-edge digital graphics system used in the broadcast industry.

Down to his last S$50 in his bank account at the turn of the millennium, he was desperate for money. 

A story in a newspaper caught the attention of Mr Lim's girlfriend at the time. It featured a group of artists drawing a nude model, and at the end of the article was an advertisement: "MODELS WANTED".

"So my ex-girlfriend said, 'Shall we go and try this? It's easier for you men – you just need to take everything off and go'."

It wasn't such an easy sell for Mr Lim, a self-professed shy guy who doesn't even take his top off when alone at home. His ex-girlfriend applied for the same gig, but backed out later. 

He said: "I had no qualifications, only O-Levels and I didn't even pass that. I was so desperate, I had to think 10 times before I withdrew S$10 to use (for anything)." 

In the end, he decided to do it.

"WHEN YOU'RE READY, YOU NEED TO BE NAKED"

Sleep eluded him the night before his first gig, he told me. A flurry of questions kept him up: Would he chicken out at the last minute? What would happen if he got "excited"?

"Every step on the way there, I could feel my heart beat," he said, his voice dropping slightly. 

"When the lecturer came and opened the room, my heart beat so loud I couldn't hear anything else, not even my own footsteps."

The moment he dreaded came quickly. 

There he stood in the middle of the room, clueless and without direction, surrounded by students peering over easels like ground moles above the soil.

Then the lecturer pointed at him.

"When you're ready, you need to be naked." 

A pause. "Now, now!"

Mr Lim removed his top, dropped his shorts and "painfully" removed his undergarment.

He recounted: "Your stomach is churning, you feel like going to the toilet to pee because you're so scared, you're embarrassed … I felt like walking out of the classroom there and then."

It sounded like a nightmare, I remarked. "It was very traumatising," he agreed. 

If the physical ordeal wasn't enough, there was also the social stigma. 

Trawling through newspaper archives later on, I found old commentaries from the 1990s defending nude models from "unfair criticism".

What was history to me, Mr Lim experienced firsthand. 

He recalled one class where a group of women – who were, ironically enough, students at a life-modelling session – belittled him, asking why he was doing such "dirty" work.

"They made me feel like I had no dignity and no pride because I had exposed everything," he said.

From the way he winced slightly as he retold the incident, it was clear the memory of it still stung. 

Although his parents knew that he did modelling work back in the day, they did not know that he posed nude as well. Some details, he decided, were better left unshared.

So how did he end up turning that dread into a 26-year career?

"The reward is good after that," he said, laughing. "The reward is money, lah, because you need cash."

Over the years, Mr Lim grew in skill and knowledge. Word spread quickly about the reliable, dependable, well-built Singaporean model unafraid to lay it all bare. 

Life-modelling jobs back then paid around S$25 an hour and cash was paid upfront upon completion. This meant that a three-hour gig instantly made him S$75 richer.

Rates in recent years have gone up to anywhere from S$50 to S$70 an hour. At the peak of business, Mr Lim could earn up to S$300 a day, up to S$6,000 a month, he said.

As his financial situation improved, Mr Lim eventually decided to go abroad and pursue a degree in hospitality and resort management from Southern Cross University in Australia. 

He said it was an important step for him, because he did not wish to be "begging for a job" in the event of another financial crisis. 

With time, society at large has generally changed its views. 

Mr Lim still receives the odd question about how he ended up in this line of work, but these questions come from a place of curiosity as opposed to judgment, he said.

"A few years ago, this guy asked me why models like me didn't want to get a full-time job. 'Is it because you have a police record?'" Mr Lim said with a laugh. 

"I told him, we choose this because we're in demand." 

Mr Lim estimates that aside from himself, there are just four other people – one man and three women – in Singapore today who are consistently available for life modelling jobs, 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is the most experienced of the lot. The youngest is in her 20s and she has been doing it for six to seven years, he said.

"In the past, models weren't as protected as we are now. A model is simply a subject – and a subject can be a flower pot, a chair, a plant – things like that."

He remembered an instance where a lecturer touched his private areas out of the blue so that his students could have a clearer view of his legs. Mr Lim recalled the students reacting to this in shock, but the class went on nonetheless. 

"It was painful. It wasn't fun," he added. Now, lecturers and students alike understand and respect models' personal boundaries.

"I used to feel very naked because I had no one protecting or speaking out for me. But now, being nude is different. It's beautiful."

They say if you love your job, you don't work a day in your life.

Knowing that Mr Lim didn't particularly enjoy life modelling at the start of his career, I wondered aloud if it got better for him. Does he enjoy it now? Or, even now, is this a genre of work that one is technically not supposed to enjoy?

"If you think it's fun just to strip, that's a different kind of enjoyment. But the job itself is not fun," he said staunchly.

"Our job is to make sure all the budding artists, students or professional artists have a stroke of genius."

Artists who had drawn him for years have sold their work, with some pieces auctioning off for as much as S$100,000. That, he said, is where he derives joy.

"It's fun to see the artists make money out of it. It's fun to see people smile at their canvas. It's fun when people look at you and say, 'Kim, I'm so happy you are posing for us today'."

What began as a need to put food on the table has turned into a source of true fulfilment for the sexagenarian. Money today is not an issue, but he continues to pack his schedule with modelling jobs for the love of the game. 

His schedule fluctuates with the academic calendar. During peak season, he can get two gigs a day, about six hours of posing. Off-peak, things quiet down.

And when he's not posing, Mr Lim stays active in other ways. He recently learned massage therapy and conducts a choir at church, helping people find their voices.

I asked him how long he sees himself modelling.

"For life models, there's no expiry date," he replied. "Artists want to see the texture of your skin, the wrinkle of your skin.

"I'll do it as long as people still want me, as long as I can stand and walk on my two feet."