September 2015

…on 18 September at PŘÍSTAV 18600 drawing on this big tree behind the stage.The thick trunk of the tree and leafy branches were a really interesting ‘surface’ on which to draw. Dima took a lot of photos of the different drawings for me, but as they were all taken from the same position beside my Tagtool workstation unfortunately the band hardly can be seen over the heads of the audience.Below, three shots of the same image where the changing colours of the stage lighting helped to give an interesting extra dimension to the drawing.

Below, I based this composition on the ‘hole’ between the two tree trunks…
…but here I just drew all over everything.
I tried to play with the different textures and patterns formed by the tree trunk and leaves, incorporating them into this drawing for the song, ‘Kone’.Below, I drew a pond hidden in the leaves for the song, ‘Ryby II’….…and then for the last song of the concert, another big head.

Exodus.

On Saturday 12 September we were at this festival which was held in a derelict industrial site at Libušín důl – a location very different from the attractive riverside park at Strakonice where I was drawing the night before! It was quite late at night when we arrived so I decided to spend my time making just one big Tagtool drawing, standing by the side of the main ‘road’ into the festival site (the same spot as in 2013!). The subject seemed an appropriate one for the ruined building on which I was drawing; the photo below shows the whole of the wall.We trained the projector on the upper part of the building so that I would be able to ‘grow’ my drawing out of the spray painting below that had been made by a graffiti crew for the opening of the festival. This light on the corner of the building made it very difficult to take photographs and I haven’t got any of the earlier stages of the drawing…but here is one showing the finished mural just before I made the final fade and my drawing disappeared into the darkness.

On 11 September we made another nice visit to Strakonice to do some Tagtooling. This time we were taking part in the town festival ‘Strakonice nejen sobě’ and we had this great riverside location for our performance!A cloudless sky meant that I had to begin drawing before it was properly dark and as can be seen from Martin’s photo of our Tagtool set up, there was quite a lot of light pollution from the streetlights on the main road behind us.
Because of this I began to draw mostly in black and white…
…and only used some bright colour when it was really dark.
Although the river was quite fast-flowing it was possible to see some reflections in the water and to add these to the composition – which was fun.

DJ DxTech909 supplied the sound for the performance – and in the photos below, some bright colour to match the mood of his music!

Catch-up time for the blog!On 4 September we were drawing at this very nice countryside festival organised by our friend Andy Tchaiovna but I have only now got round to doing a posting…Because there were already a lot of stage decorations, projections and lighting in front of the stage, projecting from inside the tent was not an option. But our big Epson projector easily shone through the canvas so we mounted it behind the tent inside the van and my Tagtool was connected via a long cable to the tent.As it was not possible for me to see easily all of what I was drawing behind the performers I decided to keep things simple – a frieze of bright colours, some big heads and silhouettes…and below here are some of Dima’s photos.


Having this small monitor (below) beside my Tagtool did help me to see – a bit!Dima also went outside to take some photos from behind the tent….

…the two above showing the outside/inside view of the same drawing. When we set up the projector we found that from inside the drawings could only be seen on the vertical wall of the tent, an accidental happening that made it look like the images were precisely mapped – nice!Finally – many thanks to Andy, Justin Lavash and all the other musicians who made this such an enjoyable evening for us!

When Dima was setting up the projection equipment for the Cupola, before the stage was built I took the opportunity to do some little drawings just for fun.For the drawings above I was using only one projector, which worked quite well, but during the festival itself the plan was to cover a much larger area of the tent using three projectors and triple head – a great idea, but the laptop we were using was not as powerful as the computer in my big Tagtool. This resulted in the drawing ‘lagging’ quite quickly so that it became impossible to position things accurately and also the central projector had a different colour cast from the two outer ones – which created yet another drawing problem. The photos below show my attempts to try to compensate for these shortcomings….

But despite these problems, drawing in the tent was fun and also had the added benefit of making the tent glow in the darkness on the hillside attracting the festival visitors to visit it.

This year I made Tagtool drawings on Grad Sneznik four times – I had a little ‘practice session’ the evening before the festival started, and then I drew from different positions each evening during the festival. For the practice session I stood in the meadow at the side of the castle where the the grey stone wall below contrasted with the bright white of the castle above.
When the clouds parted, the moon shining through the trees added an unexpected extra visual effect!
In the spirit of this year’s theme of ‘sinking songs’ at the the festival, on the Thursday evening I continued with this ‘watery’ imagery in the drawing I developed over the course of the evening on the back of the castle….


For the following evening when I was again standing in the meadow at the side of the castle Dima said I should draw something more cheerful and not so scary!


For the final evening of the festival, rather than slowly building up to a final image, I made a number of shorter drawings to accompany the programme of music and readings that took place under the arches of the castle and on the floating stage on the lake, the subject matter (roughly!) suggested by the songs.

Above, a country cottage with three ‘ostrnica’ (Slovenian tall pointed haystacks).Then I drew flames from a bonfire reflected in the lake….There was a very large audience sitting at the lakeside, on the bank below me and on the path above and between the songs and readings a group of drummers walked among them – very dramatic! Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this but here are some more of my drawings to end this post.




Grad Sneznik is a most wonderful ‘canvas’ on which to draw and having such great music to enjoy while I was drawing made this evening just perfect for me!

…Tagtool drawing every evening!
We were camping at Kozarišče again this year and drawing at the Floating Castle Site-specific Festival held at beautiful Grad Sneznik from 23 to 30 August.During the festival I was also drawing at some of the concerts that were held in this dome tent, which formed one of the festival stages that were erected in the grounds of the castle. I have so many photos of my festival Tagtool drawings that I’ll leave them for my next posting and only show the pre-festival events here.
The first of these was this concert hosted by the cultural institute Ars Viva at the new amphitheatre in the village of Podcerkev.The programme featured all the members of the Etno Histeria orchestra and, as darkness fell and the concert began, every seat in the amphitheatre was taken. There was not enough space behind the musicians for me to draw so instead we turned the projector to cover the building above the bar in the courtyard and I did several drawings during the course of the evening. Here’s a selection…





The orchestra gave a wonderful performance – a great beginning to our holiday!

A few days later we were projecting on the front of this 16C castle, Koča vas at Markovec. Now uninhabited, this beautifully proportioned Renaissance building once was the home of a German nobleman and letters dating from 17C century from the widow of this nobleman to her daughter who was living in Trieste were found recently. These were of great historical significance, not only because of the vivid picture they provided of life at that time, but that they were written in Slovenian, not German which then would have been the first language of the nobility. Milena Ožbolt read a selection of these letters at the open air concert given by musicians from the Etno histeria orchestra while I made a Tagtool drawing on the front of the castle as a background to their performance.
As I don’t understand Slovenian, before this event we met with Milena who kindly provided me with a translation in English of some of the letters to give me some idea of what I should be drawing to accompany her reading!Straw bales were set out in front of the castle for the large audience who came to see the performance and afterwards there were delicious home-made Slovenian cakes and a big open air feast for everyone – a splendid finale to another most enjoyable and memorable evening!