Drawinglive News

On 21 August we drove from Šumava to Plzeň where Vložte kočku were playing at the street music festival. The stage had a white tarpaulin roof  and a light grey fine mesh rear ‘wall’ through which the contours of the building behind were dimly visible. I was able to draw over the whole stage and the roof – two different surfaces which produced some interesting effects, a lot of distortion in the drawing on the roof and slightly out of focus double images behind the band. I began by using black and white with quite a lot of transparency as  opaque colours looked quite different on the two surfaces, the roof being much brighter.Dima took some photos from the side of the stage where the effect of the mesh background on the Tagtool drawing can be seen clearly….…and in this ‘behind the scenes shot’ the shadows of the musicians and their instruments produced a ghostly, almost surreal effect. Dima took a lot of photos at the concert – what follows is just a small selection.Here is a close-up shot to end this post. I have many more photos and also some pieces of video which I’ll try to post later – when I have some ‘free’ time!

On Saturday 20 August I was drawing to accompany Vložte kočku at the ‘koncert pro šumavskou divočinu‘, a festival to promote awareness and conservation of the forests in the Šumava region. The event was held at the pension, U  Parádů, in a beautiful valley near the town of Prachatice.  The performance took place in the barn outside the main house and although the wall behind the band was dark wood and not very large, there was plenty of space for me to do improvised drawings above the heads of the musicians.The barn was so packed with people that part of the audience had to stand outside as well inside and at times it was difficult for me to see what I was drawing over the heads of the crowd.  Dima managed to take a few  photos for me with his mobile phone – here’s a selection.It’s some time since I did Tagtool drawing for Vložte kočku and  I really enjoyed this concert. The music was great and the audience very enthusiastic, so when you add to this the beautiful location – it was the recipe for a perfect evening!

The two images above are from the little test session that I did (using our projector mounted sideways) from the balcony of the Lumitrix office in Prague and as these photos show there is a lot of ambient light both fixed and from passing cars and trams. The balcony was very small and one overhead tram light was directly in my line of sight so there was a part of the wall where I couldn’t see what I was drawing. But despite these limitations, this was a great location for drawing and I enjoyed just playing and trying out different out different images.

The Lumitrix company produce high quality plug’n’play  all weather projectors designed for permanent outdoor projections and the idea was to use this wall opposite their offices as an outdoor ‘on the street’ gallery to showcase the work of different artists. Having done this test session with our projector (on a nice dry evening of course!) I prepared a session in our studio which Dima then rendered so that it could be projected as a continuous loop to play all evening using the all weather Lumitrix projection equipment.It was very interesting for me to stand on the street and ‘watch myself drawing’.  Below are a few of Dima’s photos.For this continuous projection Dima speeded up my drawing, which worked quite well, but having seen the result I think I would like to do another session and get Dima to make my drawing develop a little more slowly and have a pause between each ‘completed’ drawing in the sequence…but as this photo below shows, Kuba (our boss at Lunchmeat) thought the session was OK! 

…a return visit for us to this festival at Valeč, near Karlovy Vary. This year Mutanti were playing in the tent at C Stage and there was a very large and enthusiastic audience for their concert.  The stage lighting was turned off for Mutanti’s performance and our projector was able to cover the whole width of the roof of the tent above the stage – but although I was standing on a box I could only just see the heads of the musicians above the audience who were standing in front of me, packed tightly inside the tent.Most of Mutanti’s music now is very familiar to me which made it not quite so difficult to make quick changes of mood between their songs, many of which are quite short. Below is my accompaniment to the song ‘Chernobyl’ – which was helped along by the enthusiastic hand waving of the audience making shadows as I was drawing to ‘catch’ the mutant animals…great fun!But as well as old favourites, they also played some new material – and below is my drawing for the two songs, ‘Julie’ and ‘Si tu navic’After this there was a complete change of scene for another audience favourite, the song, ‘Discotheque’……which was followed by ‘Uncle Honza’ with the little girl on the swing.The last photo for this post shows the beginnings of my drawing for the song about a housing estate……but at this point the battery in Dima’s camera gave out -so I have no more photos! This was really sad because I did quite a bit more drawing and at the ‘official’ end of the concert the audience invaded the stage, dancing and clapping and demanding encores. Dima put away his camera and took up the gamepad and we did some quick fire animations. There was a great party atmosphere and Mutanti were in top form – so it was very, very late before we were able to pack up the Tagtool and head for home!

Mutanti‘s concert on Monday night was held in the  (confusingly named!) venue,  PRAHA / Fórum pro architekturu a média, which was small but very well designed and had a nice intimate atmosphere. There was no raised stage but with the ceiling spotlights turned off I was able to use my Tagtool drawing to provide lighting for Jirka and Honza as well as covering the whole of the wall behind them.Their programme contained most of the songs that they performed in June at at the Music Club Střelnice in Klatovy, but in a different order – on this occasion the song, ‘Chernobyl’ (above) was followed by ‘Uncle Honza’, the song about a girl on a swing.

As most of Mutanti’s songs are both fast paced and quite short (about 3 minutes), managing the transitions between them is quite challenging. Where it was possible I tried to use some of the drawing for one song as a background for the next, either by partial fading out or drawing over it, to avoid having too many abrupt ‘pauses’ in the visuals.After this urban landscape I had to begin a completely new drawing for Mutanti’s next (hip hop) song, ‘Primitive Instincts’… …but this provided a suitable background (and gave me a full 10 minutes) to develop this drawing of the ‘big black guy’, who was the subject of the longer song, ‘Discotheque’ which followed.

After another fade to black, a complete change of atmosphere and some more abstract drawing to accompany the next two songs…

…’Andele’ (above) and then something dark and slightly mysterious for ‘Winnie the Pooh’.Mutanti ended their concert with a song about a ‘Lonely Bambi’ – cue another change of mood……and then it was time for a well deserved beer before packing up the equipment and heading for home!

On Saturday night we were at the beautiful  lakeside at Svitavy, drawing to accompany the performance by the Czech group, Prago Union. They were playing on the main stage at the festival which meant that I was able to use the 10000 lumen Panasonic projector mounted in the sound tent – which was very, very nice! Dima set up his tripod and camera alongside the projector to shoot photos at 5 second intervals in order to make a stop frame video of the performance so I have had a huge number of photos to sort through. I made an album which I have posted on Facebook, but I’ve chosen a few for this post.

There was a big and very enthusiastic audience – lots of people waving their hands in front of the projector beam, even having a ‘piggy-back’ to get a better view, which produced some interesting shadows on my drawing. But even though I was standing on a box it wasn’t always easy for me to see the whole of the stage so sometimes I had to rely on my little monitor to know where to continue to draw.For the music of this Czech hip-hop band I chose to draw mostly shadowy figures in vaguely urban environments – which is one of my favourite subjects for drawing….

…and then I used this as a background for some large portrait heads.

Prago Union’s set was 90 minutes long, which is quite a long time to do continuous performance drawing so I made several different drawings during the set, each of which I developed over more than one song before fading out and starting again.

The 1000 lumen projector easily cut through the stage lighting and the different coloured beams produced some dramatic effects which gave added interest to the drawing…

…as well as illuminating the musicians and the audience.

I  hope to post some video later but to end this post here are three photos from my last drawing sequence.

…from 9 to 18 July our ‘holiday’ in Slovenia, visiting Ljubljana and Maribor, traveling through the beautiful Istrian countryside and enjoying concerts at the Floating Castle Festival as well as doing lots and lots of Tagtool drawing – seven different sessions in ten days!  For this overview I have chosen just one photo from each session – but I will select more photos for some later postings.

Podcerkev – drawing on the roof of the building behind the stage at the Ethno Histeria World Orchestra concert at Ars Viva‘s open air amphitheatre.

Cerknica – concert with members of Ethno Orchestra held in a big barn in the centre of the town (with a spectacular thunderstorm as accompaniment!)

Floating Castle Festival – concert in the big cupola with Israeli band, Hayelala.

Floating Castle Festival – performance outside the (locked) cave at the castle.

Floating castle Festival – drawing on the façade of Grad Snežnik at the big open air Friday night Ethno Histeria concert.

Floating Castle Festival – Saturday night concert under the arches of the castle gateway – with my drawing reflected in the lake.

Ljubljana – at Tovarna ROG, an improvised Tagtool drawing session in the courtyard alongside an evening of poetry reading.

I have a lot more photos from these sessions, some of which Dima has already posted on Facebook, but I will write more about this trip in a few days.  Now it is the festival season and we are very busy – on Saturday at Rosnicka Festival in the Czech Republic then Monday in Brno, so I will not have much time for the blog!

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.

Saturday night

I began the evening’s drawing with this landscape……and as more people arrived started to add some figures in the foreground.This time there was a bigger audience than on Friday night, with people standing on the path outside the skatepark to see the performance as well as sitting inside.The thunderstorm that was promised in the weather forecast didn’t happen (I’m glad to say) but we put up the gazebo just in case. This made a nice ‘stage’ for both the Tagtool and the two musicians that we met on Friday night who offered to come and play with us. To have live music was a lovely surprise – and a real bonus both for us and the audience!As I developed this drawing by adding more figures and ‘removing’ the background landscape Dima took these close up shots…

…showing the transformation of my initial romantic landscape into a much darker subject.

Here is another of Dima’s photos from this session, his camera angle juxtaposing the painted steel plate figures on the perimeter fence of the skatepark with my drawing on the wall behind it – nice!   Then it was time for a complete change of mood – cue some joyous colour and lively animation from Ilan! Although the photos below give some indication of this performance, only video could have captured Ilan’s glowing and dancing calligraphic drawing – so next time we must remember to pack a video camera….The musicians were happy to continue playing and our audience showed no signs of going home so I did another drawing….this time a cityscape…

…with a man walking his dog among the graffiti!

As we were packing up to go home a group of people came up to ask how the Tagtool worked so Dima put on the projector again and I did a quick drawing  by way of illustration.After this scary finale it was definitely -‘time to go home’!

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.