"Art399 Portfolio" by Thomas Townsend Jr

When I was young I wasn't much into art. I liked doing my owns thing and looking at cool images and colors that grabbed my attention, now really understanding that I actually liked art. The way I really knew how to communicate my feelings was to draw them out since I struggled verbally expressing them. I really didn't know exactly what I was doing but I was drawing or doing other creative ways to express the way I was feeling at the moment to others. Sometimes to this day I still do that but I'm at lot better at expressing my emotions on paper through graphite or charcoal and painting.

My art is about feelings, thoughts that can’t be expressed aloud. I wanna make art so that my audience can understand the way I come up with my pieces. The places in the art are significant to me, they are somewhere I’ve been, and to me felt right to create a piece of art from. In my piece Through My Lense, the background is a place that I’ve been to and it has been a special memory and place that I had to make a piece out of. The value of contrast helps elevate the understanding of depth, space, giving it a more authentic look. Listening to music, being in my own space with my thoughts is the main drive for me to do art. Having the right music and beat that I can get in the zone with helps me focus, giving the artwork the accuracy I wanted. Most of the artwork I make doesn’t have color because to me it seems more real, also shows my improvement with tones of contrast along with my attention to detail. Some of the artworks that have color to show my range of color value and blends, making the art piece pop and capture the eye of the audience. Toyin Ojih’s portraits capture people in the middle of an activity or about to finish that action. Toyin captures the image of black people and tries to fight against the bad depictions that other people wanna see. I practice art in my own space while experimenting with some different techniques I’ve learned or noticed while observing others' artwork and listening to how they went about doing, trying new things. Like painting, I picked some new methods and techniques on how to start and where to execute the process of going about making a portrait or landscape painting.

Advisor/Mentor

Nicole Hand, Mike Martin

Description

During my time at Murray State I've worked with Graphite, Charcoal, Compressed Charcoal, Oil paint. Some drawing are on paper 18"x24" and the canvas would be 16"x20"

Photo Credit

Thomas Townsend

Recommended Citation

Townsend Jr, Thomas, "Art399 Portfolio" (2023). Professional Practices (ART 399). 148.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art399/148

COinS

Murray State's Digital Commons

Professional Practices (ART 399)

Collection Title