#torren thomas

“The Roots” fan-art

John Wick.

Viggo Tarasov: That "fuckin' nobody" is John Wick. He once was an associate of ours. They call him Baba Yaga.

Iosef Tarasov: "The Boogeyman"?

Inside the Fan Art: 10 questions for artist Torren Thomas The 30-year-old freelance portrait artist and character designer from Lawrence, Kansas, talks about his fantastic, new Better Call Saul poster.

1. What inspired you to create this poster about Better Call Saul? I know you are a Breaking Bad fan. Your BrBa pieces are quite impressive. I would say that it was just my love of both Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul that inspired me. I’m a big nerd and I tend to draw the stuff that I’m into and I’m definitely into Better Call Saul.

2. What artists do you consider influences? First and foremost Jason Seiler, that guy is kind of my mentor and he’s an excellent artist and just an all-around good guy. I also love Sebastian Krueger, Drew Struzan, Frank Frazetta, Tom Richmond, James Jean, Tom Fluharty, Mike Thompson, Dave Wilkins, and Dave Rapoza. There’s definitely more but those are some of my main influences.

3. How would you describe your style? I don’t really know how to describe my style. I’m definitely a caricature artist but I think there's more to it than just drawing big noses or funny faces. What I try to do is get more of the person and their attitude into a painting – that’s something beyond style.

4. Do you have a ritual or routine when you are creating art? Paint us a mental picture of you creating this piece. No matter what I’m working on, I need noise. Anytime I’m working on a painting, I almost always have a movie on the TV or am listening to something. A lot of the time I'll have both going on at the same time. I can’t really explain why but it helps me focus on the painting. Another big thing for me is rap music. I have listened to rap music during each and every painting I’ve done in the past 7 years. It’s just sort of my thing and it helps get my head in the right space to paint. I also tend to work extremely late at night, early in the morning. Often times I’m up til 3 or 4 a.m. working on stuff. Something about the majority of everyone else being asleep and me being up alone makes it easier for me to create.

5. What was your process for creating this BCS poster?  I normally start with the idea of the piece as a whole. In this case, I wanted to do something that looked like an old school movie poster. Then I started looking up references to paint from. I just try to find a bunch of different shots of all the people I’m going to paint from different angles and go from there. After I gathered everything together, I started to do sketches from some of the reference material I found, while trying to think about which ones will fit the best in a big poster. Then comes one of the more difficult parts for me and that is putting together a good composition. In this case, I had to fit six portraits, a car and some background elements into the piece and have it all read and flow well. I did a bunch of small thumbnails and just kinda messed around with position and size of the elements until I found something that I thought would work well. After that, it’s just grinding out the painting. I block in all my colors for the whole piece, then I move in and detail everything until I feel like its done.

6. What tools did you use to make it? Everything was drawn and painted in Photoshop CS5 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

7. How many hours did it take to create - from conception to completion? I honestly lost track of exactly how many hours I worked on the whole thing. From searching for references to sketching to doing comps to actually painting everything, I’m sure it’s gotta be pushing 100+ hours.

8. Which caricature in the poster are you most proud of? Which caricature was the trickiest? The caricature I’m most proud of is Mike. I think I captured his brooding, strong, silent type vibe pretty well. Also, he has a really awesome face for caricature, so he was the most fun too. The trickiest is a tie between Jimmy and Chuck. That’s mostly because of the poses I chose to draw from. Sometimes when you draw from a photo, the photo can "lie" to you about a person’s features. So someone may have a giant forehead but hold their head in a certain way that makes it look small. If you choose that photo to draw from, you may be drawing key characteristics of that person wrong and mess up the likeness.

9. What's your favorite episode and who’s your favorite character on Better Call Saul? There’s a lot of room for this to change since we are only 6 episodes in, but so far, my favorite episode is "Five-O." Mike is my favorite character in the show and that episode let you get a real good look at Mike and his past. You got to see badass Mike, which is always great, but then you also got to see Mike break down about being a dirty cop and how that affected his son. In Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul, Mike has been the silent assassin, no-nonsense type guy. So to see him in tears was shocking and awesome. All I can say is Jonathan Banks is an excellent actor.

10. What's next for you and your art? I plan on continuing to do art, improve my skills and build my portfolio so I can share it with the world. I love to do art, so I’m pretty sure I'll be painting as long as I’m able to. Don’t be surprised to see some more Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad work from me as well.

Follow Torren at: Web site / Blog / Behance / deviantART / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube

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Torren Thomas

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