“Now arriving: Union Station in Downtown LA. Connect here with: The Metro B and D Lines downstairs to your right. The J Line, LAX Flyaway, Megabus, and Patsaouras Bus Plaza downstairs to your left. Metrolink and Amtrak at posted track assignments downstairs.”

Last summer, a friend sent me a Reddit post of some very cool paintings of Metro buses and trains. I was struck with awe by their majestic and mesmerizing quality. The bright colors and intricate detail seemed to bring Metro and the city of Los Angeles to life. The illustrations inspired me to try creating some art of my own to highlight just how cool and awesome Los Angeles public transit can be.

While the Metro system has no shortage of spectacular stations and sights, I ultimately settled on a view I saw each day when going in to work — the bridge that crosses over the 101 freeway to reach LA Union Station. After all, what better way to enter the heart of Downtown LA than by soaring high over the mass of unfortunate drivers stuck in traffic below.

Rather than my usual pen and paper, I used Inkscape, a free and open-source vector graphics editor, for this massive undertaking. Now, I am not a graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve used Adobe Illustrator on occasion as a UCLA student, so I at least knew my way around graphic design software.

Upon graduating from UCLA, I no longer had free access to Adobe Illustrator. But not all was lost. A friend and colleague had used Inkscape to create maps and graphics for his work — in fact, that was how I first heard of the software. I was intrigued by Inkscape’s potential to create stunning visuals, and it appealed to me for its ability to create very precise shapes, curves, and lines — and theoretically, to do it relatively easily and quickly.

That was the case at first. Making the buildings in the backdrop, which had repetitive motifs that would’ve been more troublesome to do by hand, was straightforward. So was the train itself, where I could use my existing asset as a starting point.

Then came the cars.

I was not prepared for how much of a headache it would be to recreate the traffic-choked conditions of the 101. I immediately ruled out using a copy-pasted template for the whole thing. (Though, a few cookie-cutter cars here and there can’t hurt, right?) I tried to find a shortcut, but it turned out that there was no faster way for me than making each and every car individually, one at a time. This was the most painstaking, time-consuming stage of the whole process, and I almost threw in the towel at several points (but fortunately decided to see it through to the end!).

(Side note: this is yet another reason why we should encourage people to take public transportation, ie. get more people in fewer vehicles, rather than promote policies that clog the roads with tons and tons of individual cars! Fewer cars would not only be much simpler to draw, but also do wonders for our cities and improve everyone’s quality of life!)

I wouldn’t call this done done just yet. For one thing, I may, after posting this, decide to tweak the cars or train some more (I have OCD in that respect). But also, this illustration (specifically, the train’s destination sign) is on track to become outdated as soon as later this year, when the Metro A Line gets extended all the way to Pomona from its current terminus in Azusa. I’ll have to update it again if/when the line gets extended — again — even further to Montclair, and possibly eventually Ontario International Airport. And who knows, maybe we’ll keep extending the line, already the longest light-rail line in the world, to Phoenix, Santa Fe, Austin… all the way to the ends of the earth.

But at least this illustration no longer occupies the bulk of my creative energy. I am once again free to turn my attention to the remainder of my art backlog. And as I continue my slow return into the art world, I now have another tool in my artists’ toolkit — and a newly rediscovered appreciation for learning new skills and experimenting with boundless visual possibilities.