Drawings from the Boneyard, as it is called, and more specifically, renderings from the Neon Museum Las Vegas’ yard with a vast array of neon signs in different levels of decay or refurbishing. These are hand drawings ‘plein air’ done with pen and ink of old rusty neon Las Vegas signs. These are rendered mostly in a loose ink style with no sketching or guidelines, while visiting the location to gain some studies for a map of the Las Vegas Arts District. While I was there I wanted to see how well I could render in ink under a limited amount of time. I only had 30 minutes, and I punched out 2 or 3 signs.
The line work was done without any sketching, so any mistakes are there for good. The final details of cross hatching, stippling and shading were done away from the location. They are also done on 5-1/2 x 8-1/2″ sheets in a drawing pad, so the originals are quite small. The details and blobbing and the voids of the rollerball pens I used gave a great variation of the line details. These small originals are still able to be enlarged and the detail gets even better.
The Las Vegas Cultural Affairs Division saw the first renderings completed and granted access to me to further the project and create a collection, to be later displayed at the Reed Whipple Cultural center in the Las Vegas Cultural Corridor. A gallery display that featured other artists and art from architectural plans of some of the Strip Hotels and Casinos. The show was entitled The Art of the Sign which appeared also in Las Vegas Weekly’s “Optic Nerve’ article called “Every Where A Sign” by Chuck Twardy.