De Dios was into architecture from 1980 to 2010. The Portrait Artists Society of the Philippines Inc. (PASPI) was formed in Cebu City in 2010 and he was one of the founding members.

So he started painting, occasionally in Manlia during the late 1990s, under the spell of the Luna painting, and while still with architectural commitments. And he would visit museums and galleries during weekends. Every three months he would go home to Cebu, struggling with his paintings. He joined the Kolor Sugbu group, a training ground for many PASPI members. Every weekend they would go to the countryside for an on-the-spot painting of landscapes, still with impressionists influence. They had to finish a painting in one day. “I had to catch the moments the temperature, the atmosphere,” de Dios recalled. “Since I was into architecture, which is close to painting, and though I started experimenting on it in my college days, my works were more of straight edge, hard edge, straight lines, an early influence from Birth of the Cool, a movement of art, design and culture during the 1950s.”

Back in Manila in 2004, where there were still architectural opportunities, he met Galicano through colleagues Boy Briones, Carly Florido, and Jose “Pepe" Villadolid. He started visiting the mentor in his studio in Quezon City, learning from the master, like so many aspiring artists, then and now. And when his professional commitments finally came to an end (at the upscale Hotel Radisson V Blue in Cebu City), he volunteered to assist Galicano with PASPI as a kind of payback. And he concentrated on painting, making good his threat to devote full time to his "girlfriend" art. And bade goodbye to his "mother" art. "So I had to get really serious at painting, encouraged to paint more," he said. Asked to comment on his best or at least most representative works, he showed paintings the order of which was from early to current, instead of the other way round. Most, however, show him at a mature period in his career. One of the earliest works is rather rough (must be the hard edge of the artist was taking about earlier).