Today’s sketch subject is actress Kristen Stewart of “Twilight” fame. I promised myself I would never resort to drawing any of the ridiculously overexposed “Twilight” actors for the blog, but I made an exception for Stewart when I ran across a great picture of her in an entertainment magazine. However if I ever draw Robert Pattinson without being paid by a client to do so, you can consider that one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

As promised, here is a sneak peek of the artwork for my piece in MAD #498, “MAD Exposes Who’s Thinking What at the Obama Inauguration” written by Desmond Devlin, Jeff Kruse, Jacob Lambert, Frank Santopadre and Dennis Snee.

Click image for a Closer Look…

Click image for a Closer Look…

MAD called me up for this one with a short deadline and just as I was leaving for a long weekend with The Lovely Anna. I got back and banged it out in about a week. Frequent readers of The MAD Blog might recognize a few drawings from the “Sketch o’the Week” in there… I used some sketchbook drawings as cameos where appropriate. Between the three pages there are 51 caricatures plus two pals of mine.

There are a lot of unique elements and issues that need attention when doing a crowd scene. As I mentioned yesterday, on Thursday I will post a fairly comprehensive tutorial on the composition, layout and execution of a crowd scene. Check back after our usual Wednesday sketch tomorrow.

Poster art by Drew Struzan!

I just got the word that the movie I worked on this summer, Super Capers, got picked up for limited distribution in select cities and theaters. Here’s the press release:

Damn, Milwaukee is the closest one to me. MILWAUKEE?? Why not Minneapolis?? Oh well. No actual theater info… just the cities.

I did a series of illustrations for the film’s open credits and for a flashback done in a limited animated style, as well as two set paintings for the main villain’s lair. Looks like a fun movie, and the script was pretty funny. Maybe it’ll be a sleeper hit! If anyone gets to see it, let me know about it.

You can check out the movie’s website here, which features a bunch of the art I did. I was being considered for the movie poster art as well but the movie’s backers decided if I did the artwork in my style people might think it was an animated film, so they went with second stringer Drew Struzan instead. What has THAT guy ever done?? Oh… nevermind.

In comic book stores this week and on news stands on Jan. 20th:

MAD # 498 (February 2009)

• Cover (Mark Frederickson)
• The Fundalini Pages (Ray Alma, John Cadwell, Dave Crosland, Dick DeBartolo, Desmond Devlin, Gary Hallgren, Tim Hamilton, Darren Johnson, Jeff Kruse, Glen LeLievre, Barry Liebmann, Kevin Pope, Leonardo Rodriguez, Rick Tulka)
• Lame Attempts by TV to Explain the 2008 Presidential Vote (Barry Liebmann, Ward Sutton)
  
• A MAD Look at Snow (Sergio Aragonés)
• MAD’s 12 Surefire Tips for Stand-Up Comics (Jeff Kruse, Rick Tulka, Colorist: Ryan Flanders)
• MAD’s Sucky Twilight Outtakes (Uncredited)
• The 2009 Al Jaffee Calendar! (Al Jaffee)
• MAD Exposes Who’s Thinking What at the Obma Inauguration (Desmond Delvin, Jeff Fruse, Jacob Lambert, Frank Santopadre and Dennis Snee, Tom Richmond)
• Spy vs Spy (Peter Kuper)
• When Adults Say… Remind Them… (Jacob Lambert, Peter Bagge)
• The MAD World of… Pets (Stan Sinberg, Marc Hempel)
• Monroe and… The Plane Trip (Anthony Barbieri, Tom Fowler, Colorist: Carl Peterson)
• What the Heck is the Difference (Mark Fredrickson)
• MAD’s All-Inclusive Do-It-Yourself Celebrity Scandal Blog Posting (Jacob Lambert and Bill Fibbers, Mort Drucker)
• Tell-Tale Signs That You’ve Got a Really Bad Psychic (Teresa Burns Parkhurst)
• The First 100 Minutes of the Obama Presidency (Bill Fibbers and Frank Santopadre, Drew Friedman)
• MAD Fold-In (Al Jaffee)
• Drawn Out Dramas (Sergio Aragonés)
• Next Month In Mad #499: Dead Celebrity Apprentice!

Some may remember me grousing about a killer crowd scene job I did back in early December… well, this is it. Three pages of the crowd at Obama’s inauguration that features 51 caricatures (53 if you count two friends I snuck in). I’ll post a sneak peek tomorrow. Also look on Thursday for a tutorial I have prepared on drawing crowd scenes using this one as an example.

Q: When you work from reference materials, the facial expressions of the people are rarely (never) what you need to incorporate into your drawings. Are there any principles you can give for altering facial expressions to comic proportions and situations while still retaining a good likeness?

A: It’s very true that if I were to need to rely on finding the exact angle and facial expression of a given actor in order to pull off a recognizable caricature of them for a given panel in a MAD parody, I’d never get anything done. Instead I gather up multiple references of an actor from various angles, assemble them into a single page and use them as a basis for all my caricature… but not necessarily as exact reference. I have a technique I use for the MAD “continuity” work that I have already imparted here on The MAD Blog, but it’s been a while so here it is again for those who didn’t catch it the first time:

References used for caricatures or any illustration job are meant to be an assistance, not a crutch. If I cannot create an illustration of something without a photograph showing me the exact image, angle and lighting I am looking for my effectiveness as an illustrator would certainly be compromised. I use references just to see how things work, to pick up details and aspects I might not otherwise realize existed and to help me make my drawing more convincing, not as the entire basis for everything I draw. It’s a little like a writer using a dictionary or thesaurus to find a word for use in his story, or reading articles or books to learn about facts or details of the subjects he is writing about. The story he writes is his creation, but he might do some research to write more convincingly about a given topic. If I need to draw a building, I might refer to some pictures of buildings to see how the windows, trim, stonework and such might work and be added to my drawing to make it look more like the kind of building I am trying to draw, but I don’t need to find the exact angle and view of every building I want to draw in order to make it work. In fact I will often change things even from a direct photo reference for reasons of composition or effectiveness in what I am trying to achieve with the illustration.

The same goes for caricatures. If I have several pictures of a subject from several different angles, I can draw their face multiple times at different angles than those shown me in the pictures by using what I have learned of their face from the existing references. When it comes to expressions, faces all have the same basic muscles and tend to have the same reactions with respect to emotions and expression, so by combining those elements I can draw the same face with different expressions and still maintain a cohesive likeness.

With respect to a MAD parody, the trick to doing this is twofold. First, I need to find several important features that are “keys” to the specific face I am doing multiple drawings of, and carry them through each different caricature even as I take liberties with the expressions. It might be heavy eyebrows, the squareness of a chin, the head shape (usually an important one) or any one of many such things that make the particular face unique. These become linchpins that make the viewer believe they are looking at the same character in each panel. Usually the crazier the expression I am drawing, the more I have to rely on these “keys” to keep the cohesion.

The second part of the equation is what I call the “keystone” technique. Basically what this means is that, at several points through the parody, I incorporate a caricature of a subject drawn from specific photo reference. These caricatures are always more detailed and have the strongest likenesses of the lot. These are always found on the splash page (those being the “intro” keystones) and then here and there throughout the rest of the parody. They act as “keystones” or “cornerstones” that bridge the gap between the ones where I am faking it with expressions and angles I don’t have specific references for. They keep up the viewer’s perception that the same character is being seen throughout. Jack Davis used to use this technique all the time with his MAD parodies, except he’d often just do the one keystone caricature on the splash and then do a cartoon representation of the character for the rest of the parody. I’m not Jack Davis, so I do more than one keystone caricature.

As far as expression goes, you can exaggerate and impose almost any expression on a caricatured face and maintain a passable likeness as long as you keep those keystone elements strong and easily readable. I have a small mirror in front of my drawing table and will sometimes make faces in it to get an idea of what happens to the basic muscles and features for a given expression. I can transfer what I have observed onto the existing caricature structure. Another great resource for that is to find the same actor in a previous movie on DVD. Looking at them move and speak gives you a lot more understanding of their mannerisms and facial expressions than static photos do… and maybe even a glimpse at a few extreme expressions.

Thanks to Daniel Moir for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

I’m headed back home from Orlando today, but in the meantime here is another of the weekly caricatures I have been doing for The Independent, a local newspaper in North Carolina. These are used as header art for a column called “Good Old Boys Gone Bad” .

Artwork by Michael Ramirez, Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonist

The National Cartoonists Society Foundation is once again administering the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship for college students who are studying and/or pursuing work as cartoonists. Last year’s winner, Juanita Medina, received not only a scholarship but a free trip to attend and be honored at the NCS Reuben Awards. This year’s winner will get the same treatment!

Entry into the competition is pretty straightforward. Here is the official info from the NCSF:

THE JAY KENNEDY MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP

Applicants must be college students in the United States, Canada or Mexico that will be in their Junior or Senior year of college during the 2009-2010 academic year. Applicants DO NOT have to be art majors to be eligible for this scholarship.

Along with a completed entry form, applicants are required to send 5 samples of their own cartooning artwork; noting if and where the work has been published (either print or web).
Please send copies. DO NOT send original artwork.

DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 6, 2009

The applications will be judged by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation (NCSF) and the number of scholarships given out and their amounts will be at their discretion of the NCSF.

Please send your completed form and your cartooning artwork (8.5×11 copies only, no originals). Send CDs for animation only.

THE JAY KENNEDY MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP
National Cartoonists Society Foundation
341 N. Maitland Avenue, Suite 130
Maitland, FL 32751

Once again, the deadline is fast approaching on February 6th, so get those samples together, fill out the application form found here, and get it in the mail ASAP. There are very few programs like this specifically for students of cartooning… in fact it’s the only one I know of. Don’t miss out if you are eligible.

It’s hard to believe but this marks the 1,000th post here on The MAD Blog. I’m celebrating by going to Disney World!

Well, actually I’m in Orlando at Disney World with The Lovely Anna and Elizabeth because today is Elizabeth’s 19th birthday (!!!), and Disney World is one of the few places on Earth she can go and really like being there. Of course this means Anna and I will be riding “Peter Pan”, “It’s a Small World” and “Winnie the Pooh” at least a dozen times each today, but every time is like the first time when it makes Elizabeth smile.

Thanks to the miracle of advance blog posting, post 1,001 will magically appear here tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who frequents The MAD Blog. 2009 will see many more installments of my “Drawing Caricatures” tutorials, as well as a few other tutorials like the one I have planned later this month on drawing crowd scenes.

Now you’ll excuse me while I enjoy my Mickey Ice Cream Bar and heckle some Disney caricature artists.

This week’s sketch is a warm-up study of actress Gwyneth Paltrow. I’ve had to draw her a few times in MAD, specifically for the parody of “The Royal Tennenbaums” some years ago as well as last year in “Iron Man”. For some odd reason I find her somewhat hard to capture. She has smoky eyes with the lower lids either naturally or artifically dark. She also has a slighly wall-eyed look… by that I mean her eyes seem to look off in slightly different directions. Her nose looks different in almost every angle. She can look very glamorous and very ordinary in any given picture.

I get a fair number of e-mails from artists looking to “break in” to MAD asking for information and advice on how to do it. Most of the following info is in The MAD Blog FAQ, but in the interest of keeping it “out there” here are the recently updated basics you should know if you are a cartoonist interested in working for MAD:

If you want to break into MAD, the easiest way is with a grappling hook, 50 feet of rope, a glass cutter and suction cups. You can bribe your way in on Wednesdays with home baked cookies offered to Dick DeBartolo. Seriously, getting into MAD is notoriously hard to do, but it isn’t quite the impenetrable fortress it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Back then MAD had their legendary freelancers in their prime, and there was frankly very little work they had in the magazine that one of their established and well known “Usual Gang of Idiots” was not available to do. It was ‘a closed shop’ as was quoted among hopeful freelancers. Today is a little bit different.

The magazine is striving to establish a more modern look and identity in the 21st century, and is more open to newer styles and different aesthetics than the traditional MAD look. Now that the magazine is in color, the dynamic has changed somewhat and artists who work in color have more of a shot at getting their chance than those who work in black and white only. There are also a few recurring features that need many artists with varied styles. These changes have opened the doors much more to new artist’s work. Given all that, MAD is still a tough nut to crack. In order to ‘break in’, you need three things firmly in place: have work that they like a lot, demonstrate professionalism and be in the right place at the right time.

Do Work They Like- This first point may be the hardest. MAD’s idea of work they like isn’t necessarily the same as just “great work”. There are lots of artists that are terrific and that the editors and art staff are impressed by, but they feel their work just doesn’t fit the magazine. Many caricaturists fit this mold. I know of several who’s caricature work is exemplary, but who suffer from “caricaturist disease”. That’s a syndrome where a caricature artist thinks the world stops at the neck. They are so focused on the face they ignore the rest of the universe. MAD looks for artists who create their own world as seen through their own eyes, meaning the chairs, cars and toilets they draw have as much personality as their caricatures. MAD also looks for artists who can ’sell a gag’ as I have mentioned before, meaning their artwork makes a written joke funnier and easier to understand. They also look for uniqueness. They don’t want Mort Drucker or Jack Davis clones. Finally, they are always looking for the “MAD feel”, which doesn’t seem to have a quantifiable definition.

Demonstrate Professionalism- This seems like an oxymoron as MAD is famous for self-deprecation and bucking the rules, but don’t let that facade fool you. These guys know their business and expect their freelancers to hit deadlines, do professional work and take art and editorial direction like a pro. The easiest way to demonstrate this is by having a body of work already established… in comics, magazine illustration, advertising, etc. It’s very, VERY hard to do work for MAD without having established credentials as a cartoonist or illustrator. MAD has been at the top of it’s genre for 50 plus years, and they don’t need to act as a proving ground for young, inexperienced talent. Unfortunately the MAD knock-offs that DID act as such a proving ground are basically all gone now. Having a portfolio with published work is basically a must.

Be in the Right Place at the Right Time- This means just get lucky. In order to get work from MAD they first must have a job available to give you. Here’s how the distribution of freelance work happens at MAD (as I understand it): First, the editorial and art staff meet with the features and articles that need art for upcoming issues. They start out with the “A” list of freelancers, or those who’s work is in almost every issue. They assign jobs to them as they see the individual artist’s style fits the piece, taking into account the artist’s availability, etc. Once all the “A’ listers are busy with something, they move on to the “B” list, or those who’s work is in the magazine consistently a few times a year. If there is any work left over at this point, they move on to the ‘best of the rest’, meaning those artists who have done some work in the past but aren’t really regulars. If anything is still left over, they will start considering new artists. As you might imagine, many months might go by without ever reaching that point.

There are two features in MAD that allow for new artists to get a ‘tryout’ without MAD having to commit a deadline or multiple pages to: “The Fundalini Pages” and “The Strip Club”. The “Fundalini Pages” is a three page collection of short gags, features and jokes that often need a spot illustration, and I’ve seen numerous new artists crop up there. The “Strip Club” is a multi-page feature containing comic strips that have edgy and quirky subjects and feels to them, and many new artists have appeared in that. Getting work in these sections is a little more likely and can lead to bigger assignments.

Here’s an important point for those who seem to think they are not being given the proper consideration when sending in their work to MAD: There is no secret address or password that will get your work in front of “the right person”. Not even home baked cookies will make any difference. Trust me when I say that anyone who sends work into MAD will get the proper attention paid to it, usually by art director Sam Viviano himself. Send artwork to:

MAD Magazine
c/o Sam Viviano, Art Director
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019.

Writers can submit via e-mail at submissions@madmagazine.com. Do not e-mail any artwork, always mail it. Here is a link to their submission guidelines for more info. My advice is only send them strong, publishable type work, and leave the cool sketches you ripped out of your sketchbook at home. They aren’t interested in your ‘potential’, they just want to see work they could envision reproduced in the magazine.

Finally, be patient. Continue to send submissions in periodically. That way you have the best shot of having your work happen to be on Sam’s desk the day they are looking for someone to do a Fundalini spot. Never send the same thing twice, always make it new work they haven’t seen yet. Don’t get discouraged… after all, if I can get into MAD anybody can!