Just joined this group but have been an artist and an art model for 7 years now. I suggest looking up a book called The Art Models Handbook, by Andrew Cahner. It's well written, cheep, not very long, and easy to read. More importantly it'll tell you exactly what you should expect.

If you're looking for gigs, you're most likely to find work with photographers by joining ModelMayhem.com and posting that you're a new model and would like to have photos taken for exchange, meaning the photographer gets your time, and you get copies of his/her finished photographs to add to your portfolio of work. You can start charging photographers for your time after you've got a decent portfolio that shows what you're capable of, but you'll never find paying work until that portfolio is full of exceptional stuff.

If you want to model for drawing or sculpture classes then you should start by looking for those community classes. If there's a liberal arts college or university in your town then you should go there and see if they have figure drawing classes, if they have any sort of art program they probably will, if they do ask if they're hiring models.

Once you get started, if you're any good, then you'll gain some limited notoriety among artists and other models, once that happens it'll be easier to find jobs but if you want to do it at all regularly then you'll always need to be doing something to sell yourself. It's not actually all that hard though, since artists are always looking for new or different models. I love modeling for drawing and sculpture the most but it's generally the more physically taxing form, while photography is generally more creatively taxing. Both are wonderful and fulfilling! I hope you get to enjoy it as much as I do. Good luck.

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