Welcome to the Way Back Gallery
This is a space where I aim to showcase the evolutions and revolutions of my art throughout the years, starting from the year 2015, up until 2025, from its humble beginnings as a wannabe concept art portfolio, through a stint in comics, always more or less interchanged with illustration work.
I hope this gallery provides you with many things: enjoyment, fun, curiosity, but it also shows a realistic and honest course through an artist’s development – one that is not always straightforward, one where life happens, one where style and consistency make a lot less sense.
Have a great visit!
2015
After leaving college, I ventured into the wide world of art, intending to create a game art portfolio and refine my digital art skills.
There’s some good, there’s some less good, but it was a time for experimentation.
2016
2016 may have been one of the most prolific years of my creative output. I was still taking classes in illustration and concept art, while working part-time, and trying to find out what methods aligned with my life and goals.
Initially, feeling very insecure in my digital skills, I learned how to paint by using a black and white base, sometimes with some photo-bashing, and build the color on top with a multiply layer. This created images that were very dark and desaturated, leaving me unsatisfied with the final result.
It also saw my first attempt at creating a series, in which I tried to illustrate several locations and characters from Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.
With practice, I began to move away from the dependency on a black and white pre-painting, and started using color in bolder ways, while attempting to develop a concept art portfolio.
And then something changed. I started working longer hours, spending a lot of time commuting, and having less time and energy to work at my computer. Not having the means to afford a drawing tablet, it was to traditional art that I turned to, to help me get through some very long, tedious days.
2017
This year saw the last gasps of my attempts at concept art, as I tried to balance work and dreams, slowly replacing digital art aimed at a portfolio with traditional art that was completely aimless, and made only to suit my own tastes and need for a creative outlet.
That year, I also participated in my first Inktober. Inexperience and megalomania led me to create illustrations that were way too complex, and led me to burn out, but impressively, I did complete the challenge. Present here are only a few of the 31 illustrations of that year.
2018
2018 marked the start of the end of what felt like an age, but were only a few years of work. After several offers and opportunities coming my way in quick succession, I decided to give comics a try, and spent the majority of this year dedicating myself to that craft, with what I felt were mixed results – my work got published, I got an honorable mention in a national competition, but I was also extremely burned out, and missed the earlier freedoms that illustration allowed for.
2018 ended much like 2019, with 30 days of Inktober. This time, with lessons well learned, the illustrations I created for this challenge were far simpler, made in postcard size and using small pops of color.
2019
In a continuation of the year before, 2019 began with comics, mostly short ones, drawn in sketchbooks, either inspired by my own writing or by song lyrics.
And then came the big change. At the end of 2019, I got the chance to work in an animation studio as a clean-up artist – it was intense (and poorly paid) work, which got me drawing frame after frame for hours. That, along with the very detailed comics that I continued to work on, put so much strain on my right hand that I developed De Quervain’s tendinitis.
This condition would go on to become permanent (I still suffer from it) despite months of physical therapy, and it drastically changed the way I make art (and my whole life in fact).
The art that follows marks the moment I slowly began to draw again, after months of rest, and the slow shift from traditional to digital art once again.
2020
2020 was a radically different year from the ones before. As a global pandemic raged, my life was in the midst of big changes, as I adapted to a forceful change in career by going back to school to study graphic design. This opened the door to new software and new ways of thinking about illustration.
2021
Studying graphic design and pursuing vector illustration opened doors that I had never thought would open for me, as I saw my dream of illustrating a book become a reality.
I also feel that that was the year my digital vector art reached its apogee, with very few illustrations made, but of a quality I remain proud of to this day.
2022
There isn’t much to show for 2022. It was a complicated year, in which I decided to try freelancing full-time as a designer, which meant most of my time was dedicated to creating work for clients and looking for my next gig.
This led to a sort of “digital fatigue” in which I felt burned out from creating art on a screen every day, and the longing for pencil and ink came rushing back with a vengeance.
2023
That “vengeance” continued strong in 2023, with a short series inspired by medieval art, and taking (once again) music and lyrics as inspiration.
2024
This is where it gets a little weird. Unsatisfied with the kind of work I was doing as a freelancer, and disappointed to find out that my hand couldn’t handle the sort of detail that medieval-style illustration demands, I went back to digital illustration in the hopes of rekindling that old flame and creating a signature style that could open the way for more exciting jobs.
2025
No matter how much I enjoyed the final look of my vector illustrations, I just could not bring myself to enjoy the process. The texture of paper, the smell of paint, and mostly, the time away from a screen, once again reminded me that traditional art is where I find my joy. So in 2025, with lessons learned from the past, I decided to embrace my artistic side and return to my origins, knowing that I need to adapt whatever comes next to my physical limitations, but without losing sight of the art that rings true to me.
So ends our exploration through 15 years of artworks. Creating this gallery was a strange and revelatory experience that helped me make sense of my route so far.
I hope you enjoyed this honest journey through an artist’s work and life, with all its twists, turns, highs, and lows.
The Way Back Gallery’s exhibition ends here, but there’s more to come, and you can continue on this journey with me by subscribing to the newsletter or following me on social media (I’ll leave all the links for that below).