Introducing 'Wallpaper of the Day'

We reached out to him with a couple of questions, and to learn more about him and his unique process of blending traditional and digital media.

I'm Hampus Olsson, a designer and artist from Sweden. I work with companies like OnePlus, Spotify, and more. I'm the founder of GrandWorks and Spacetofu. I have created most of the OnePlus wallpapers through the years. To learn more of my work, have a look at my wallpaper app Abstruct, it's available for both Android and iOS!

I started playing around with digital art as a kid, and eventually created an artwork called 64 Watercolored Lines back in 2013 which gained some popularity online at the time. My wallpaper career really started when I met Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus. I was living in India at the time, and he had come to visit our office as we have common friends. They had just launched the OnePlus 1, and we casually discussed the possibility of me working on some wallpapers for the upcoming OnePlus 2. I was super excited for this task, so I did my best and delivered a bunch of wallpapers for this new device. Since then I have made around 100 wallpapers for OnePlus. I launched my own wallpaper app Abstruct a couple of years back, which recently passed 1 million installs!

I have always been fond of experimenting with different mediums, techniques and ways of creating my work. Abstract art really interests me, it enables me to dive into a piece of art without too much thought, and I let myself just create in the now without planning, and without thinking ahead too much. Sometimes I play around with acrylics and oil paints to create nice textures, which I then use in my digital artworks to add complexity and structure. I work mainly in Blender to create the compositions, then complete the artwork in Photoshop. When I make animated wallpapers, it is harder to mix mediums, so I usually go for a more simplistic approach which I then finalize in After Effects.

Making wallpapers for OnePlus is always a welcoming challenge, they really got an eye for detail and like to challenge me to create something new each time.

While boarding the plane bound for Paris, OnePlus messaged me about some new wallpapers that needed to be done urgently. I figured since I was going to travel around Europe, that I could use this opportunity to experience the delight of painting in Paris. I, therefore, decided to go back to basics, not touching my computer at all during the initial design process. I went around town looking for inspiration at various art galleries. On the way, I found a great art supply store where I bought myself lots of ink, acrylics, mediums, brushes and papers. I then rented an apartment for a couple of days, where I experimented and used up all the materials I had bought, leaving the apartment filled with art, covering the whole floor so that I had to jump over the artworks to be able to navigate around.

A day later it was time to head for Berlin. Sadly, most of the artworks hadn't dried up yet. I, therefore, had to photograph all of them to be able to use them digitally before they got ruined in the packing. Trying to balance the artworks on different kitchen appliances while catching the sunlight outside the window, the color was dripping, it all had to happen extremely fast! I was late for the flight and had to rush, most of the paintings didn't make it and got ruined during the flight, but I had created a great library of textures that I used for the final artworks of the OnePlus 3T.

There's currently over 400 wallpapers available in Abstruct, and I got so, so many new wallpapers that are going to be made available in the app soon. I have a lot of new wallpapers already made for the app, just waiting to be released. I also got some new collections that I plan to release once I got a large enough amount of wallpapers to populate it with. The next upcoming collection will be for my photography work. For the other collections, I usually try to release at least one wallpaper per week.

I got so much going on! I'm working on a new app, as well as a new version for Abstruct with some cool new features. I'm also developing my own games, which is really fun! Other than that, I'm growing my company GrandWorks, we are currently hiring both designers and developers. On the wallpaper front, I always have something in the works, so my computer doesn't get much rest between the renders. I have a bunch of new stuff to come, and I look forward to sharing it with you!