City of Angels

City of Angels is a celebration of the diversity, contradiction, and strange accessibility of Los Angeles. It’s an honest but absurdist, definitely-not-a-real tourism advertisement—produced as an archival giclée fine art print that borrows the language of civic pride and lets it unravel just enough to tell the truth.

The bright yellow and blue-purple palette will feel familiar to anyone who’s spent time in LA. There’s a faint Lakers echo in there—intentional. It leans into the city’s ego, its optimism, and its visual loudness. LA loves to announce itself. This piece does too, but with a wink. The result sits somewhere between confidence and satire, which feels right for a city that sells dreams while tripping over reality.

The image itself started as an obsession. I love photos of older people with tattoos—history, defiance, softness, grit, all living on the same surface. That idea maps perfectly onto Los Angeles. It’s a city where difference doesn’t cause friction; it barely registers. When you see someone who isn’t like you, you shrug and keep walking. There’s something comforting in that. Your version of the world isn’t special here—and that’s the point.

I came across a photograph of an older Asian man with an incredible amount of character and presence. His face told a full story already. He didn’t have tattoos in the original image, but that was easily solved. The illustration became a way to amplify what was already there—adding layers of lived-in detail without turning him into a caricature.

The entire piece was created digitally in Photoshop, starting with photographic reference and reinterpreting it through hand-drawn brushes and line work. The goal wasn’t realism. It was translation—flattening expression, age, and attitude into something graphic and declarative. Typography was always part of the plan. Dense, overlapping type at multiple scales and angles was a hard constraint from the beginning, mirroring the way Los Angeles overloads you with information, signage, neighborhoods, promises, and noise all at once.

As a finished object, City of Angels is meant to live confidently in a modern space. It modernizes a room without trying too hard. It works just as well for people who love Los Angeles as it does for people who can’t stand it. Printed as a high-quality archival giclée, the colors stay bold and punchy, whether it’s professionally framed or casually clipped to the wall.

It doesn’t ask you to agree with it. It just asks you to look—and maybe recognize something familiar.