The “March of Progress” — the iconic illustration showing human evolution from ape to modern man — has always fascinated me as a visual format.
It communicates an entire story of growth, adaptation, and change in a single glance.
I wanted to loosely borrow that structure to tell my own story.
The idea was to create an artistic CV in a single image. Seven figures, each representing a different job — company name, dates, tech stack, tools included.
Instead of a list of bullet points: a visual timeline where you can see the evolution.
The style is an architect’s sketch brought to life with watercolor. Bold pencil hatching, translucent washes, visible construction lines. Technical but warm. Precise but human.
The character at the far right is the same persona used across all my Cloud Native Engineer hero images, grounding the illustration in a consistent personal brand.
Prompts
Intermediate Stage
Create a watercolor illustration showing career evolution inspired by the “March of Progress” evolution diagram. Use loose, artistic watercolor techniques with ink pen outlines and paint splatters. Show seven figures in STRICT SIDE PROFILE VIEW, all facing right, walking from left to right in a line like the classic evolution image. Each figure progressively stands taller and more confident. All seven figures depict the same character progressing through career stages: VisualDNA (2013) with Java and web icons, Big Data Partnership (2013-2015) with Hadoop, BenevolentAI (2015-2017) with Python and Spark, Skimlinks (2017-2018) with GCP, PlayStation (2018-2021) with AWS and Golang, Elastic (2022-2025) with Kubernetes, and loveholidays (2025) with GCP and Kubernetes. Use loose watercolor technique with visible brush strokes. Color intensity progression from pale/minimal to rich/vibrant. Timeline “2013 → 2025” handwritten at bottom.
Final Vision
Architect sketch with bold pencil hatching and light, translucent watercolor washes. Create an isometric view showing seven figures in profile progression representing career evolution from 2013 to 2025. Each figure shows the same character aging and gaining confidence through career stages: VisualDNA (Java, Web), Big Data Partnership (Hadoop), BenevolentAI (Python, Spark), Skimlinks (GCP, Python), PlayStation (AWS, Golang, Python, PS5 console), Elastic (Kubernetes, Elastic logo), and loveholidays (GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform). Use consistent skin tone throughout. Bold pencil hatching with light translucent watercolor washes. Clean isometric perspective with visible construction lines. Keep the walk style consistent and keep all figures in proper proportion showing progression of confidence and skill.
Refinement and Post-processing
Getting seven figures to look like the same person — aging naturally across twelve years — while rendering dozens of recognisable tech logos at small scale proved harder than expected.
The AI struggled to maintain character consistency and logo accuracy at the same time.
Main challenges:
- Keeping the same face, skin tone, and build across all seven stages
- Rendering tech logos (Kubernetes wheel, Golang gopher, Elasticsearch mark) at readable sizes without distortion
- Ensuring company names stayed legible without overwhelming the composition
- Balancing watercolor looseness with enough precision for logos to be identifiable
After multiple prompt iterations, the logos were still not accurate enough.
I used GIMP to manually replace the most distorted ones with correctly proportioned versions, composited over the AI-generated base. AI for composition and style, manual editing for precision.
Final color grading increased contrast between figures and background wash, making each stage read clearly even at thumbnail size.