Originally published in Verbicide issue #19

Molly Crabapple, functioning on just four hours of sleep and looking no worse for the wear, perches on a bar stool in a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Art Monkey.” She’s conducting an interview with a pair of students holding video cameras. Her doe-eyes are rimmed in a heavy black kohl, a fringe of fake eyelashes emanate like porcupines. Surrounded by enormous klieg lights, the pint-sized artist and illustrator holds court discussing the release of her first book, Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Colouring Book, a romp through the whimsical world of cabaret life drawing courtesy of her bimonthly Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School sketching salon.

The year-old salon, held at The Lucky Cat, a hole-in-the-wall bar tucked into a nondescript windswept street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, serves up a rollicking concoction of sketching and socializing, burlesque performance, drinking games, wacky contests, and prizes. A fitting venue, the bar’s intimate crimson-colored confines recall a late 20th century bohemian Parisian café or, well, a bordello. On this early winter day, more than 20 drawing enthusiasts gather to sketch Clams Casino, a platinum-blonde burlesque performer wearing little else than sequined panties and tasseled pasties.

Crabapple, a waifish yet voluptuous burlesque performer and former nude model, presides over the sessions along with the book’s co-author, John Leavitt, with a formidable panache, tossing out bits of lascivious black humor when the model takes a break. She takes the stage to award a prize for the student who’s drawn the best original reindeer modeled on a pose by Ms. Casino. A prize is also awarded for the best drawing of a dysfunctional Santa.

The 23-year-old Crabapple grew up as Jen Caban, the precocious and talented daughter of a children’s book illustrator. Crabapple honed her drawing skills at 17 in a Paris bookstore (Shakespeare & Co.) where she also lived. She spent time traveling through Morocco and Kurdistan: “I posed for a photographer as a Kurdish girl,” she beams. There was also a brief stint in a Turkish jail.

Crabapple spent three years studying drawing and studying art at the Fashion Institute of Technology before dropping out, frustrated and bored by traditional approaches to life drawing. While a student, she turned to nude art modeling to support herself while continuing to draw and hustling to get illustration jobs. The modeling eventually led to performing burlesque and cabaret acts, and the idea for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. Along the way, she also began illustrating posters for New York’s thriving burlesque scene.

“I’d been dancing burlesque around the Lower East Side and was awed by the visual culture of the dive bars — the tassels and the sequins and the girl-flesh — I tapped top New York burlesque dancers for the first Dr. Sketchy’s models,” Crabapple says in her book.

Throughout her adventures and exploits, drawing remained a constant in Crabapple’s life. After dropping out of “stuffy old art school,” she soon started racking up commissions. She’s made her name as an illustrator and artist working for a diverse roster of publications including The New York Times, Playgirl, and SF Weekly, along with scores of websites and blogs.

Her style consists of a bawdy, whimsical, and erotically-charged blend of Victorianna and French Roccoco — cleavage-heavy corseted women, bodacious goddesses adorned with pasties, and curvaceous, luminous painted ladies. She’s currently illustrating two sex books (one on female masturbation) for Avalon Publishing and embarked upon a book tour in February to promote Dr. Sketchy’s. The book is packed with her illustrations, drinking games, paper doll cutouts, and instructions on how to start a Dr. Sketchy’s chapter. The book serves up a smorgasbord of goodies ranging from tips on “how to draw (breasts) the Dr. Sketchy way,” to the “History of Depraved Life Drawing.” Interspersed among a welter of colorful personal anecdotes are photos of burlesque models in lascivious poses, word riddles, and recipes for aptly named drinks like the French Whore.

There are nearly 20 Dr. Sketchy’s chapters, including branches in Denmark, Australia, Detroit, London, and Los Angeles. Cocoa Mae, the 21-year-old organizer of the London branch, calls Molly’s book “a proper dirty little fairytale book,” and sees Dr. Sketchy’s as a movement “because it’s a rebellion against all those boring clubs playing the same old thing. People don’t make the effort anymore; even burlesque clubs are getting repetitive…I love seeing people walking out of Dr. Sketchy’s going, ‘that was weird, but I liked it.’ Fantastic!” Mae adds: “If there’s anyone who can achieve world domination, it’s her.”

As a former artist’s model, Crabapple (via Dr. Sketchy’s) sees to it that the models are paid fairly and receive adequate breaks; she recalls hours of backbreaking work as a model with few, if any, breaks.

“I once did a backbend as a naked model for five minutes and held it. Nude modeling is really hard,” Crabapple recalls. And it’s not necessarily lucrative: some gigs pay as little as $12 an hour, some at least $100 an hour or more. She’s plied her modeling craft for Lowrider magazine, Nerve.com, Suicide Girls, and several photographers. “I haven’t done porn,” she says resolutely.

Crabapple sees herself primarily as an artist, not a businesswoman or single-handed brand franchise: “I’m a geeky, workaholic girl who loves coffee and spends a lot of time sending out listings” to promote Dr. Sketchy’s classes, book signings, her shows, and other events.

She claims not to like the limelight, though she performs regularly at such New York City burlesque venues as The Slipper Room, Mo Pitkins House of Satisfaction, and The Cutting Room, among others. Terrified of public speaking, Crabapple manages to read from her book at book signings with the mellifluous voice of an angel and the coy and cunning charms of a Cheshire cat. She hops onstage with Leavitt at The Lucky Cat during breaks in Dr. Sketchy’s to award prizes and initiate drinking games. Attendees consist of former art students, graphic designers and illustrators, and basically anyone who likes to draw.

Crabapple’s no shy, reclusive artiste. At a book reading, Crabapple staged the Q&A, first asking and answering her own question. Friends asked follow-ups. And then audience members received crayons and paper and drew three five-minute poses of Amber Ray, one of Crabapple’s favorite models.

Crabapple sees herself first and foremost as an artist: “I love to draw; I’ve been doing it since the age of five. I think burlesque is fun, but it’s not where my real talent lies.” The book, which she and Leavitt wrote in two months of 12-hour days, began as a tutorial on how to start a Dr. Sketchy’s salon. The idea for the salon grew out of all the boring life drawing classes she and Leavitt had experienced as art students. “Why should life drawing be so dull?” she asks plaintively in the book.

When it comes to her work as an illustrator, she explains, “My real love is books, they’re so much more durable than magazines that can be trashed. I feel incredibly blessed to be making a living doing art. Artists should realize that once you reach a modicum of skill, the rest is really promotion.” In fact, for her next project she’s looking to do a book on marketing for artists: “There’s no reason they should starve.”

Her burlesque alter ego is “goofy-silly,” and Crabapple clearly likes to mug for the audience and the camera. This writer observed her mugging continuously and seemingly comfortably. For one of her acts just before Christmas, she performed a kitschy act dubbed “Nothing for Christmas” in which she beat up Leavitt onstage.

Where Dr. Sketchy’s is concerned, “I wanted to make drawing more fun.” Sean Bieri, 39, who organizes the Detroit chapter, seems to think she’s on to something: “Anything that takes art out of the exclusive hands of an elite and makes it more fun and accessible is a good thing.”

Kat Bardot, 24, spearheads the Dr. Sketchy’s in Los Angeles, which she thinks is the “tamest branch,” certainly not like Detroit where Bieri had to eject a “creepy drunk” guy from the very first session. Says Bardot: “So far I have had all burlesque girls as my models, but I’m going to start throwing some fetish in there; I would love to find a contortionist or an amputee.”

Bardot thinks Sketchy’s has the potential to become a movement.

“It is a type of alternative figure drawing that has yet to really be explored, except for among these workshops.”

So what’s next for Dr. Sketchy’s? “Maybe a branch in Antarctica,” Crabapple offers playfully.

Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Colouring Book, by Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt (Sepulculture Books), is available at www.sepulculture.com and drsketchy.com.