On 7 and 8 September at Karlovy Vary’s festival of light, ‘Shining Vary’, I had two very intensive evenings of Tagtool drawing. The location was the St Maria Magdalena Church in the town centre…
….and to cover the whole of the front of the church, Borovka, the festival organisers, set up four powerful 12000 lumen projectors – which was really wonderful!
With the street lighting and floodlights in front of the church turned off, the colours from the projectors were beautiful and super-bright and in the darkness my drawings could clearly be seen from a distance as well as near to.
We arrived two days before the festival so that I could test the equipment and make drawings to be projected between my live sessions on the Friday and Saturday nights.
The festival nights were a real drawing marathon for me – the show was scheduled each evening from 9 pm till midnight. I did three live drawings each night, so having the pre-prepared sessions in between gave me some welcome pauses. The theme chosen was ‘Happiness’ and I decided to do some abstract work as well as figurative drawing to provide variety for the audience. Kuba and Dima took lots of photos for me, which was great! Below is a selection of Kuba’s photos from Friday night.
Below are photos that Dima took on his mobile phone on Saturday. The two collages below are from my first drawing sequence of the evening…
…and here are some more images from the later sessions.
It was a great opportunity for me to be able to draw at this wonderful location with such powerful projectors. I must end this post with a big thank you to the organisers for inviting me and also to Cyril Kaplan (pictured below) who provided the live music to accompany my drawing.
The two young boys who came for the workshop drew happily all afternoon – and the adults were able to ‘have a go’ as well! We had also brought along our two iPads to show off the latest version of the Tagtool for iPad app. and I was amazed how the boys instantly discovered for themselves and were able to use all the various drawing and animation functions. I realise that I will never achieve the speed and confidence of these ‘digital natives’ so I was very happy to end the afternoon session with this demonstration of ‘old-school’ drawing!
In the evening, before the concert began, we set up the Tagtool outside and once it was dark we tested the projector and I did this drawing…..
The concert began with vocal numbers from soloists from 
It was great to draw for these vocalists, and something a bit different for me, as mostly when I am drawing the accompaniment is either electronic or instrumental.
Because some of the songs were quite short I wasn’t able to make just one image for each but instead I developed a visual theme that I thought would fit in with the music.
For the spectacular operatic finale of the first part of the concert I made this one abstract visual. (Unfortunately this one photo that I have is rather dark). 
Then there was a complete change of tempo with the arrival of the Cerknica Big Band…..
…and again I developed my drawings during more than one piece of music, beginning with a fairly abstract background that I could draw into and add figurative elements.
This was a great opportunity for me to draw with such an exciting and accomplished musical accompaniment!
All too soon the concert came to an end and I only had time to do one last quick black and white drawing while the band played an encore.
I had had a most enjoyable evening of drawing – the weather was perfect for an outdoor concert, the music was great and the audience very appreciative – so here is a very big ‘thank you’ from me to everyone involved!
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