Cal Trans District 7 Headquarters Photoshop Painting by Ian Espinoza
Every year, the necessity of creating a holiday card presents an opportunity to create an image that will take me outside of the boundaries of our usual illustration work.
Searching for a subject one morning, this view presented itself at Spring Street and 2nd downtown. While waiting for the light to change I glanced to my left and caught this interesting view of Thom Mayne’s Cal Trans Headquarters.
When I saw the view, the whole painting immediately appeared in my mind – the dark stone and steel monolith framed by fiery red trees and a somewhat gaudy canary yellow sky. Something about this juxtaposition felt very much in character with the SoCal urban mythology.
I decided that this would have to be done in some sort of opaque media. I considered acrylic and gouache, but as I have been dabbling in Photoshop for some time now, even incorporating elements of it in some recent projects, I thought why not take the leap and create the whole thing digitally. The potential of this new media is exciting and working with the endless variety of brushes and lighting effects in Photoshop was a fun challenge and a good learning experience. I’m looking forward to finding more contemporary subjects to paint in this dramatic and abstract fashion.