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Written by Andrew Frastaci | Edited by Anna Folsom and Elisa Lau The COVID-19 pandemic was hard on many of our Asian diasporic neighborhoods, and Little Tokyo in Los Angeles was no exception. The 140+ year old section of Downtown LA that served as the lifelong connection to my Japanese heritage had lost at least 20 businesses [1] during the first year of the pandemic. Born and raised in LA, Little Tokyo was my nearest J-Town, the anchorpoint of much of my ethnic identity. Grocery trips with my family, birthdays at Kouraku (now recognized as America’s oldest operating ramen shop), awkward first dates, and so many more formative memories belonged in Little Tokyo, but these sites of my memories were quickly being pasted over with “For Lease” signs. Like so many across the global Asian community, I felt helpless to stop it.  A digital painting (2023) of the bathroom at Suehiro Cafe, a 50+ year-old Little Tokyo late-night spot evicted at the end of 2023 [2] and relocated to 4th & Main St. As headline after headline announced the closures of community institutions I grew up with, I was also navigating a pivot, completing my degree in architecture while trying to break into a career in background design in animation. Quarantined alone and indoors, I stumbled through online courses, Google Maps StreetView, and any image reference I could get my hands on. Having spent formative time in architecture school studios, I could never make the full adjustment. The tools available online were endless, yet I craved an in-person learning environment. Restricted to reference images to study from and lacking the opportunities to experience a place with my own body, my learning was painstakingly slow and I grew more frustrated. Just as my efforts to improve at my art felt hollow, so did my attempts to support Little Tokyo: How could drawing in my room get me to truly improve as an artist? And how could a college student’s budget possibly save my favorite neighborhood restaurant? -- These questions still linger as the years pass since the initial lockdowns in the United States. Los Angeles County declared the end of our local public health emergency for COVID-19 in Spring 2023, and despite my desperation to get out and see my city, it took some rewiring to embrace the urban outdoors again. I’ve since graduated from school, but looking back at early lockdown sketches, they lack the perspective depth and detail that real-life references now provide me. You’ll find Little Tokyo packed with people on the weekends, but the scars from the early days of the pandemic still run deep. Despite the crowds, rents are higher than ever and many businesses are still operating on the brink [3]. We all probably feel as if the animation industry is just as dire, and working on my environment-drawing skills has personally felt futile at times. There’s only been one remedy to this doom and gloom I’ve found to be effective: finding ways to practice my art inside the neighborhoods I want to see thriving. The practice of plein air needs no introduction: what better way to hone your sense of color, perspective, and proportion than to capture a scene outdoors on location? Dedicating time to plein air and urban sketching has greatly improved my practice as a background designer, making me more decisive as a result of the speed and discomfort brought on by plein air. Nothing trained the “Ctrl+Z” habit out of me faster than working with pen and paper, feeling the sun beat down on me as I try to capture a scene before a bus blocks my view or a crowd moves away.  The original Giant Robot store in Sawtelle, West LA’s Japantown. The benefits plein air provides you don’t have to end there, however. Where you choose to do your painting or sketching is just as important as the act itself, and it's in this decision that you can make the most impact. Choose a place relevant to your heritage, whether it’s an immigrant-founded small business or a local cornerstone in the heart of a city, and choose to hone your skills there. You’ll find, as I have, that spending a day drawing in a neighborhood like Little Tokyo brings you a deeper sense of connection to it than previously experienced. The slowness of urban sketching and plein air brings out the invisible threads holding these places together into the light. Intense focus on the same spot for a period of time shows you the circulation and DNA of a neighborhood: you’ll pick up on the deliverymen moving in and out of restaurants, the walking patterns of a local elder, the confused expressions of a tourist family. You’ll leave a plain-looking storefront with an intimate knowledge of each brick, crack in the plaster, and poster in the window. It’s a wonderful sensation, as if you’ve just bathed in the history of a small yet essential part of your community’s history. Sit down and buy a coffee, a lunch, a trinket, and take your time to observe. These community cornerstones stay alive through lifelong, loyal customers—try and strike up a conversation with an employee or owner. If you post your sketching day on social media, tag the business! These relationships built, dollars spent, and awareness spread about the small businesses that matter to your community all serve to keep our neighborhoods alive. My role in the animation pipeline is to craft environments, but no matter what part you play, we all work in service to a story. The most resonant narratives in our medium are rooted in lived experience, so why not tailor our methods of practice in the most personal ways possible? I have Little Tokyo - you have Chinatown, Busan, Manila, Jakarta, any place foundational to you that needs your presence to recover from this past decade. Dig deep into these spaces and try to capture their spirit on paper, and while you’re at it, keep them in business. You’ll find that the next time you’re searching for a reference for a project, you’ll find something inside your memory a lot more powerful than whatever Google Images can provide. Sources and Future Reading
To Our Reader: If Andrew’s journey into the streets of Little Tokyo resonated with you, we invite you to join us this April for the AIA Plein Air Challenge. Whether it’s the facade of an Asian-owned small business or simply a quiet moment with an egg tart at your local park, help us map the diverse textures of the Asian experience. Use the hashtag #AIAenPleinAir to share your work with the community. Update: May 15, 2026
While the official challenge has wrapped up, we invite you to explore our latest social posts for highlights from the AIA En Plein Air. We still encourage artists to share their work using #AIAEnPleinAir, and we hope you’ll join us for our next community challenge. Comments are closed.
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