Thomas Thorspecken Artist Biography
Thomas Thorspecken (Thor) was born in New Jersey. He is an artist, urban sketcher, muralist, illustrator, animator, instructor, and a journalist. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, before working as a freelance illustrator designing magazines and publications.
Thorspecken relocated to Orlando as an animation artist for Disney. Over ten years he worked on films such as The Lion King, Mulan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas, and Lilo & Stitch, to name a few. He currently teaches, or has taught, a variety of art courses and workshops at Elite Animation Academy, the Crealdé School of Art, Full Sail University, and for Urban Sketchers International. Since January 2009, as a New Year’s resolution, he has created at least one sketch a day documenting the vibrancy and life of arts and culture in Central Florida for his Analog Artist Digital World blog, culminating in more than 4,000 individual works of art illustrating this community and beyond.
Thor is always seeking new challenging projects, commissions, and ways to capture local life through art. Follow Thor on Instagram: @analogartistdigitalworld, Twitter: @analogartist, Facebook: Analog Artist Digital World, and subscribe to his blog: www.analogartistdigitalworld.
Statement on Urban Sketching
Doing this New Year’s resolutions was a way for me to finally put down roots, to become part of this community, one watercolor sketch at a time. Most people have seen me at an event from the theatre, to the Chinese Dragon Parade, on to Lake Eola’s Farmers’ Market, sitting off in a corner or in the shade somewhere. I typically work in mixed media while focusing on watercolor, though I also am doing more and more work digitally.
Unlike your typical landscape painting, I work quickly to capture the energy of any scene and hope for people to be present. I can never catch one complete moment in time, so my sketches are a composite of people coming and going over the length of any event. For example, a theatre sketch may include all the characters of a play though they were never all on stage at once together.
I hope that my art can capture memories and history in a way that a camera cannot. Have you looked closely? You might find yourself drawn across the pages of my sketchbook