Manic Kingdom

Tight pencil. 

Carmine red pencil and Black Prisma Color pencil on Bristol Board.

2012.

Final cropped color. 

Digital color over cleaned scan of tight pencil.

2012.

I’ve had this image, or versions of it, waiting in the back of my head to be realized, pretty much since the inception of Tuff-Girl when I was drawing Las Vegas centric story ideas. Vegas has her iconic wide diamond shaped sign. She also has the casinos’ neon signs of the strip. And of course, there’s “Vegas Vic” and “Vegas Vicky” (a.k.a. “Sassy Sally”).

I wanted to explore more icons of the south west. For me, there’s nothing in California circa 1970 more iconic than the old marquee of the Magic Kingdom - right up there neck-and neck with the ubiquitous“Hollywood” sign.

This is also one of those images where I am just dying to figure out what the story behind it is.

For the first time, I attempted to keep the pencil lines, with out outlining everything. As such I probably spent twice as much time on the coloring stage as necessary. The grain is especially lost as it’s reduced and saved as JPGs.