Drawing at the Floating Castle Festival

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!