June 2016

Friday 24 and Saturday 25 June – two nights of Tagtool drawing at 48 Stunden Neukölln Festival on the big wall at the MBU Skatepark where Ilan Katin and I did a bit of guerrilla action back in February.

Friday Night

This setting up photo shows just what a great location this is for large scale outdoor Tagtool drawing and this time (unlike in February) the weather was absolutely perfect! The graffiti and contrasting smooth and brick sections of this wall make for all kinds of interesting drawing possibilities too.  I drew first – only drawing in black and white because it wasn’t quite dark, but people had arrived already and were waiting to watch the performance.Dima took lots of close up photos – here’s a selection…

Once I had finished the foreground figures I began to fade the drawing so that the background went to black … …and now it was dark enough to work in colour and change the image.When I had finished this drawing I ‘handed over’ to Ilan. He uses the Tagtool for iPad, drawing with lots of animation – which is ideally suited to his calligraphic style and also provided a nice contrast to my figurative work.  I’m so sorry I haven’t any video of his work to post to show his animation as this photo only shows one fleeting moment in the progression of the drawing. To end the evening – some more ‘old-school’ Tagtool drawing. And this time I used some really vivid colours!It was such a great opportunity to be able to work on this enormous scale! To end this post – a couple of Dima’s close up photos of this drawing .In a few days I will do  a posting about Saturday’s performance.

We arrived in the historic and picturesque Czech town of Loket on Saturday 11 June for the second day of this festival but it’s only now that I have found the time to sort out my photos and write up the blog.We were providing the visuals for the band ‘-123 min’.  I hadn’t heard their music before but they are a very popular band in the Czech Republic.  After catching a couple of other music performances in the afternoon and early evening it was time to set up the Tagtool and our big projector at the main stage. The projection covered the whole wall behind the musicians and the roof of the tent, giving a really big surface for drawing.

I began with some transparent layers of colour to provide a background that I could draw over – which meant that I could develop the drawing to last for more than one song. There was big audience and a great party atmosphere at this festival performance! Since my Tagtool drawing had to illuminate the musicians as well as providing background visuals, instead of fading to black between sequences I drew in white to light up the stage and then began to add a new layer of drawing over the previous image.As well as these abstract visuals I also did some black and white figurative drawing.

At the end of the concert the audience kept shouting for more, and  Andy, the organiser of the festival, came onstage with his violin. The band started to play again and they had a jam session – which was great fun, so I joined in with more (rather wild!) impromptu drawing….Dima took lots of photos for me so I’ll end this post with a couple that i think really capture the atmosphere of this most enjoyable festival performance.

On Friday 10 June I was drawing at the Music Club Střelnice in Klatovy.I haven’t drawn at one of Mutanti’s concerts since last year and for this performance they had some new songs as well as music that I know well. At this venue there were all kinds of decorations, stairs and a railing to a second room behind the stage (not easy to draw over!) so Dima put up a white cloth behind the stage to make a ‘canvas’ for my drawings. After a 3 minute abstract sequence for the opening song, ‘Frequence’ the programme continued with a song about homeless people warming themselves around a brazier on the street…  .. cue for another 3 minute drawing. Most of Mutanti’s songs are about this length, which makes it quite difficult to draw something appropriate and recognisable and also to move from one scenario to another in so short a time. Below, an old favourite – the mutated animals…. …and then a new song about a man who dug a hole in the road and kept on digging until the hole was so deep it reached to the centre of the earth.The next sequence of images began with a short hip hop song and ended with the 10 minute long, ‘Discotheque’ – a song about a big black guy.Having a longer time meant that I could develop this drawing before fading it out….…then a quite different atmosphere with the girl on a swing for the song, ‘Uncle Honza’……and morphing this drawing into an urban scene for the song, ‘Deti’.It was great to be back ‘on the road’ again and I really enjoyed this evening of drawing.  So – a big thanks to Jirka and Honza for the music and also to Dima for taking the photos!

Time to re-start the blog!

Since I broke my arm at the end of March I haven’t been able to do much drawing –  which I found very frustrating indeed.  But once I got the plaster cast off, as part of my ‘rehabilitation’ I went along to the ‘Karel je King’ 700 year anniversary open air event on 14 May held at at Stalin in Prague and joined in the Tagtool open session.Seven weeks without doing any Tagtool drawing….I was very out of practice but it was great to be able to join in the fun at this event! (And thanks to Sid Svoboda who took these photos for me.)I had another opportunity to do some drawing at the monthly Tagtool jam session on 30 May at mo.ë in Vienna, meeting old friends and joining in the drawing with Maki, Iink and the rest of the crew.Below are a couple of photos from this jam session.Last Friday and Saturday I was drawing at two events in the Czech Republic, first in Klatovy, at the concert given by Mutanti hledaj východisko and on Saturday night at Meander Festival at Loket.  Dima took lots of photos at both events so I will save them for separate postings later this week.