I was invited to do a live Tagtool performance, drawing on the facade of this beautiful art nouveau building on Národní třída in Prague as part of the 17 November celebration, ‘Díky, že můžem!’, the big festival and march to remember the events of that day in Prague in 1989. The subject matter for my drawing, which was to be completed in 40 minutes, was to show the students demonstrating with a background in the colours of the Czech flag. With its many windows and ornate decoration this drawing presented a real challenge for me.
The projector supplied by the organisers of the festival was a Titan Super Quad 20000 lumen – it was a Titan indeed, and super bright – really great! The projection area covered the central part of the facade from the second floor to the roof. I began my drawing with some small background figures above the second floor balcony while the group Plusminusnula played on the stage which had been erected on the street below.
I continued to add more figures during the short commemorative address to the huge audience that completely filled the whole roadway…. 
…and finally when the guitarist Tomas J Holy appeared at the first floor window and began to play I started to add some larger figures in the foreground.
Because it was not possible to make a drawing that avoided all the windows and ornate decoration on the building, arranging the composition so that the figures would stand out from the background presented a real challenge. I tried to keep the faces and raised hands of the demonstrators clear of the decoration and kept to a fairly simple illustrative approach in order to produce a complete picture within the very short time limit of 40 minutes before Tomas J Holy finished playing and the march moved on.
I must end this post with a very big ‘thank you’ to both the organisers and the crew who provided our technical support – everything was prepared for us exactly according to plan, which for such a big public event is no mean feat!
1 Comment
so beautiful, thank you for sharing.