Kent meets Nevada
The flamingo. Las Vegas, or Margate?
Margate or Vegas?
Inktober 2017: day twenty one
My lap of honour around Vegas starts at the Luxor.
I am alone in the pyramid lift and it is making a noise no lift should make. It shakes violent from side to side and the display says ‘EZ’. What does that mean? Is this part of the experience? I feel claustrophobic.
The display still says ‘EZ’. The doors start to rattle inwards and for the first time in my life, with force, I press the ‘save me’ bell. Nothing happens, but a second later the display says ’16…17′ etc. Soon the doors open and I leap out with enthusiasm.
Near check-in, The Luxor
To my dismay, when I head out, the only available lift is the bone shaker. I hold the doors until a big group of people join me. Their reaction to the shaking and grinding confirms this is NOT part of the experience.
Who can resist the MGM Grand Lion at sunset
I can confirm that women wear far more clothes in the real Paris
Halloween at the Harley Davison shop. Almost as terrifying as the lift at the Luxor.
Inktober 2017: day thirteen
I had a request for Halloween pumpkins today. So with just an hour to spare before leaving Vegas for my road trip, I reeled off as many pumpkins at I could.
One of the brilliant Halloween displays on the Linq Promenade
Friday the thirteenth: The gates of hell, where soft rock meets teeny pop. No wonder that fella looks a bit peaky
Sweetly terrifying pumpkin family
Inktober 2017: day 12
Good morning Las Vegas!
The high roller at the Linq
Slowly baking as the sun gets higher.
Looking north towards the Stratosphere Tower and the Wynn
Totally toasted by 3pm!
Flamingoes and Daquiris are all you need
Inktober 2017: day 11
9am is far too early to stumble across a pair of 20 foot high peacocks, just begging to be sketched.
Peacock flower display in The Bellagio Conservatory
Once I finished the pen work, I eyed up the fancy mosaic floor and decided this was not the place to risk ‘Inktober day five: The return’. So I went round the corner to a safer spot, to finish the ink wash.
Don’t spill it. Don’t spill it.
Not quite believing that no one moved me and my grubby little palette on, I returned to my flowered friends to finish off.
Next stop, the worlds largest chocolate fountain, 8m high and multi-flavoured!
A woman knows real love, for the first time
My final stop of the day had to be the fountain of the gods at Caesars palace.
Oh wing-ed horse you are the campest I have ever seen, with your teeth so white. Forever destined to be a grinning backdrop in the photographs of tourists less beautiful than you.
Inktober 2017: day ten
For Inktober, I’m following the urban sketchers manifesto, essentially, paint it as you see it, live, as it happens.
However today, I’ve also managed to match the official Inktober theme of ‘gigantic’. Hard not to, since everything in Vegas is gigantic.
I’m working solely in ink this month, straight down in pen with no sneaky pencil outlines first. So the MGM Grand lion could so easily have ended up wonky.
See… I really am here!
The MGM Grand lion. It could so easily have gone wrong…
I also did a quick sketch of New York-New York, whilst a couple stood next to me getting married by a man with a briefcase. Just them and a photographer.
I added the colour sitting next to an Irish bar, in New York, in Las Vegas. Weird.
Think I made a better job of the real thing!
Inktober 2017: day nine
Today I was mostly, trapped in permanent twilight inside The Venetian and Caesars Palace.
Gondolas at twilight and opera at 11am.
Endlessly circling to find a way out of Caesar’s Palace, I eventually gave up and sketched this man having a meltdown
One final casino sketch before bed
