Romain Trystram
Trystram never set out to be a vaporwave artist, and neither his interviews nor his portfolio use the word. His glossy, gradient-lit cityscapes were folded into the canon anyway, cited as work that uses vector art to produce the clean neon visuals the movement is associated with.
Born in Paris, now based in Agadir, he spent seven years as an animation art director and colourist before going freelance, partly from watching his grandfather, the painter Roger Trystram, work at home. His method starts with the sky: "The sky is the key to lighting as that's the main source, so the first thing I do when starting an illustration is to fill in the sky using a linear gradient."
The same technique has served campaigns for Adobe, Mercedes-Benz, Meta, Intel and Virgin Atlantic. His covers for synthwave and retrowave mixes are the likely bridge between the commercial work and the label fans keep attaching to it. His stated subject is contrast, not nostalgia: "when you draw light, you draw the opposite in the same time".