Artist Study - Torvenius

Over the past few months I've been studying other artists work, mainly artists whos speciality lays within speed painting and concept art. After a while I came across an artist by the name of Axel Torvenius, a Sweedish concept artist working for a small games company responsible for working with bigger concept art branches of other video games companies.

 

Although his work is incredible what really cought my eye and interested me was his speed painting folder. The reason I found his speed paint folder so interesting was because his style and technique meant that he is able to create beautiful art but with an extremely simplistic design and feel.

 

Because this style attracted me so much I tried out speed painting myself, using Torvenius' loose brush techniques to create simple but reasonably pleasing art that I was quite proud of.  

Below are some samples of Axels speed painting, in some of the pictures it is quite easy to see some of the techniques that he has used to create his art such as textures in his backgrounds and low opacity on brushes to make a more loose and layered feel to his work.

 

After looking at some more of his work I was inspired to try and create my own speed paints which are shown below, along with the processes of how I came about creating each one and some of the tricks I picked up from studying Torvenius.

Speed Paint 01 - Lake

 This was my first attempt at speed painting, I started in full colour and then added further blended colours into it to create the sky, water and the mountains. At first i was happy with the finished product, especially the roof of the shack in the bottom left and the long pole next to it. However I decided I would try more attempts using different techniques with the next one.

Speed Paint 02 - Marsh Wanderer

This piece was actually inspired by one of Torvenius' own works, specifically the stone that this character is holding, in one of his speed paints he drew a character holding a stone similar to this one which was the main thing that caught my eye so I decided to use it as inspiration. Unlike the last piece, I began this painting purely monochrome, only using different varients of greys and blacks on a variety of opacities. Afterwards I used overlay to create different colour theories and gave it a more swampy feel. The final step was to add texture to the picture as a whole, I did this by using both a tree bark and a gravel texture and lowered the layers opacity to give it a more grainy feel. I really liked the way this one has turned out and its my favourite so far.

Speed Paint 03 - Iron Serpent

This is my final piece I have done so far and although I am happy with it I still prefer my previous "Marsh Wanderer" piece. The methods of making the iron serpent were pretty much the exact same as I did to create the previous one, using only lowered opacity monochrome colours and then using an overlay to add the colour. I feel that I should have allowed more room to show off more of the snakes form, however I was very happy with the textures that I used over it. In order to create the Iron Serpents more mechanical look I converted a picture of a chopper motor-bike and duplicated it, turning it in odd angles with each duplicate, I also added a sand texture for the grainy feel.

All in all im happy with how my speed painting is comiong along so far although I have a lot to learn I feel that I have improved in the short time that i have been learning this new art technique and will continue to hone it to a more satisfactory standard.