Monthly Archives: July 2015

This year I was drawing with the Lunchmeat Label, who were providing visuals for performers on the Electronic Stage, a new festival stage in the renovated Old Baths Building of the Hlubina Mine in the historic Dolni Vitkovice complex.My set was to accompany Sons of Magdalene, a project of American musician Joshua Eustis. I began with some rather dark-toned monochrome drawing.The Lunchmeat crew had this big screen set up behind the stage with mesh ‘wings’ on either side which meant that two ghostly versions of my images appeared on either side of the stage when I was drawing. I began with a lot of transparent ‘clouds’ which Dima then animated, enabling me to have a moving and continuously changing background over which to develop my drawing. Using animation like this with the ‘old-school’ Tagtool is something new for us in a performance – and although it was often difficult for me to draw against this moving background it looked very effective. I don’t have any video so the photos (kindly taken for us by Gome) will have to serve to give some idea of this process.



Then I began to use colour, again over an animated background and this time Dima also applied animation to the figure, making dramatic changes in scale.


We followed this with a more abstract animation with lots of fast moving lines….
…then I ‘covered’ this animation with some more figurative drawing.

To end this post – a shot from the final moments of the performance.

…projector bombing on the quayside at Naplavka with VJ Suave on their last evening in Prague before beginning their journey back home to Brazil.We parked the van on the quay, set up the Tagtool, projectors and sound system, started up the generator and then spent the night drawing and just having fun.Guillaume played some great music to accompany our drawing and Dima took both photos and video during the evening. I’ll have to post the video showing VJ Suave’s animations later but meantime here are some photos of our work.We had this really long wall to draw on so we were able either to combine our images to make one big picture or to work separately…

Here’s a photo of one of Ygor’s animated drawings……and in this shot, he’s beginning to ‘invade’ my black and white landscape!
Ygor uses the Tagtool for iPad so he took this opportunity to try my ‘old-school’ Tagtool. Of course he had to work ‘cross-handed’ on my left-handed All-in-one……attracting the attention of the passers-by with these great super-bright images!

Drawing ‘cross-handed’ like this isn’t very comfortable and it was a pity that we didn’t think about taking the Tagtool mini with us – something to remember for next time! Then Ygor returned to his iPad and I did some more drawing….
It had been a perfect, hot summer evening and it was well after midnight with the moon high in the sky when we stopped drawing and began to pack up……definitely a night to remember!

…two magic nights of Tagtooling with VJ Suave, Maki, Seppi, Iink and Malu!
We met up with the Lunchmeat crew in Prague before it got dark to set up the Tagtools and projectors under the trees in the park. The big picture in the collage below shows the building at Malostranska in the centre of Prague chosen by Lunchmeat for the outdoor event – what a great location for Tagtooling!We were using all three ‘generations’ of the Tagtool – my beloved ‘old-school’ All-in-one, Tagtool for iPad aa well as the youngest member of the family of Tagtools, the Tagtool Play. Below – Maki, Iink and VJ Suave at work…It’s the first time we have tried a multiplayer session like this on the street using all the Tagtools and it was quite a complex set up that took a little time to get used to. We were using two matching Epson projectors, one for the ‘old-school’, the other for the iPads – ours and one from Lunchmeat – which worked brilliantly. (Since we invested in this Epson 6000 full HD projector we’ve used it at every event, indoors and out – it wasn’t cheap, but it was definitely worth saving up for!!) I haven’t many photos as most of the time I was busy drawing, but below are two stills from an animation by VJ Suave, Maki and Iink… Below, a combination of my ‘old-school’ drawing together with iPad animation…
…and this sequence of photos shows the progression of some of my ‘old-school’ drawing combined with some more iPad animation from Maki and VJ Suave….


We all had a lot of fun and all too soon it was time to pack up and go home!So here’s a big “thankyou” to Lunchmeat for organising everything and also to DJ tvprodukt who provided some great music to accompany the drawing!!

After this street session, the following evening we had a jam session at home in the studio – and this time everyone was using iPads (including Dima and me!)Of course the stills I took with my little camera can’t show DJ Suave, Maki and Iink’s clever animation techniques….but I think they capture something of the sense of fun that can be had when a lot of people draw and animate together!Another sequence of drawings on the studio wall…
…and this photo from my iPad shows how the session ended.
An iconic cat from VJ Suave…
…with a lot of additions from the rest of the company!Here Maki looks surprised by the reflection of the cat…..
…while in this photo Dima’s black and white figure menaces VJ Suave!And needless-to-say the partying went on till very late…..