The image above was for the TED conference when they came over for an event at the aquarium. I had some time to work on it so I was able to put in a lot of details in the cityscape. My only directive was to draw something that represented Long Beach. I knew that the ports would be an important element and that the Long Beach skyline would need to be included and of course the Aquarium of the Pacific had to be part of the image! Pulling together elements of what represents the city of Long Beach, I made a couple of quick sketches of the idea I had and then went to the internet to find images that would fit what I had in mind. Only on an illustration can you get this many disparate views and elements into one image! The original sketch is done in Adobe Photoshop, which was later vectorized in Adobe Illustrator. The gradient was added to reflect the idea of new ideas, green practices, and positive outlooks to represent City 2.0.
