Yesterday there was no post on The MAD Blog. I’d like to point out that in the almost 4 years of the existence of this blog that is only the second time that has happened. Worse, I wimped out on a Wednesday, so there was no “Sketch o’the Week”. My bad.

Today I will make up for it by doing not just the last of my LOST themed ink wash sketches, but a step by step of the process. Above is the initial pencil sketch, Daniel Dae Kim as the über cheek-boned Jin Kwon. I darkened the scan so you can see it better… in reality it is very lightly sketched with an H lead. Later today Tomorrow I will post the steps of each application of ink wash up to the final.

The second edition of the “MAD‘s Greatest Artists” series of book will be released soon, and is available for pre-order on Amazon. This time around the great Sergio Aragonés is the subject, and this volume features a selection of his best stuff from the last 50 years. Unlike “The Complete Don Martin“, MAD couldn’t do a complete collection of Sergio’s work for the magazine because:

1. He’s still doing work for them and it wouldn’t be a complete collection anyway
2. It would take about 20 volumes to reproduce all the work Sergio has done since his debut in MAD #76 in 1963…. approx 15,000 drawings.

Regardless, lucky us that we can get a collection like this in a 272 page hardcover. I’ll be ordering one, and hopefully Sergio will sign it for me if I can ever get close enough to him through his crowds of fans.

It’s that time of year again, where I spend several days drawing out at my local theme park while the new artists get their skills in order… and that means new samples for the walls of our booths. My updated Tiger Woods above is based on a previous Sketch o’the Week.

Q: I started to simply add this as a comment on your post, but after a second thought I felt it may be better served as a “Sunday Mailbag” question. Regarding your “Sketch O’ The Week” on Wednesday, May 12, you posted the following comments: “I debated whether to even post this caricature of LOST’s Elizabeth Mitchell as Dr. Juliet Burke, since I lost the likeness somewhere along the way between the rough sketch and the final washes. However, seeing as how I didn’t post one at all last week I’d better get something up today.”

Does this happen often with your sketches? I ask because this is a wonderful opportunity for me to pick your brain on this issue. When I look at this sketch, it seems that you’ve nailed each feature individually. I mean, she definitely has the high arched eyebrows, piercing eyes, the “duckbill” upper lip and a fairly square — but not too masculine — jaw. And yet, even though it’s a great sketch, I can see why you think you’ve lost the likeness somewhere along the way. Still, when I look at the individual features I can’t really see which ones you could actually draw any more accurate in order to improve on the likeness.

This happens to me fairly often. It will seem that I’m really nailing a subject’s features in a caricature, yet I lose the likeness in the final drawing. When this happens, I can never quite recover the likeness in that particular drawing, and I most always have to start over from a completely different perspective. Do you have any advice on how you can salvage the likeness in a drawing when this happens? Or is there no easy way to recapture the likeness? Are you ultimately better off just starting over from scratch again?

A: I know that’s a long question but Lash brings up several points that I think really deserve to be part of the discussion.

First off, missing the likeness in a caricature can happen for lots of reasons, but for me the one that seems to be the biggest culprit is not being able to let go of some preconceived notions you have about your subject when the drawing is clearly showing you that your notions are wrong. The drawing I did of Mitchell is a perfect example… I had this idea in my head that she had a wide face, mainly due to the prominence of her cheekbones. I was convinced of this, and I tried to shoehorn her features into that head shape. The result was that any likeness I had gotten in the sketch phase was based on superficial, individual features drawn on top of a poor foundation, and the loose nature of the medium I did the final sketch in couldn’t survive that delicate balancing act. The likeness was destroyed, even though if you look at things individually they are not that far off from the subject. Trying to beat that square peg into the round hole of my erroneous “wide face” observation ruined the caricature. I good caricature is more than the sum of it’s parts. Like a good piece of music, the individual notes themselves are put together to make the melody become something memorable.

I’ve found that when you run into this type of issue, when you work and work at a face and the likeness eludes you, you must step away and go do something else for a while. Beating your head against the wall by continuously drawing and redrawing the same face will not help. It’s not a problem with your drawing or your hand, it’s a problem with your eyes and your head, and they will usually not suddenly get it if you try and force them to shape up. Go do something different to completely get your mind off the drawing and the subject. Then, when you come back to it, find and use completely different reference shots, and start over from scratch. Don’t go back to the same drawing and reference that has been eluding you. Look for profile references or extreme 3/4 views and do a series of quick studies to feel out the face and get a grip on it. Throw away all your preconceived notions and just draw it with no attempts at exaggeration, and let your sketches suggest what those exaggerations need to be. These methods usually do the trick for me.

Thanks to Lash LeRoux 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!

Today starts our 20th season drawing caricatures at Valleyfair theme park in Shakopee, MN… and it’s not snowing.

The above sketch of Jorge Garcia as Hugo “Hurley” Reyes I did as a part of “National Doodle Day“, where lots of sketches and drawings done by various artists as well as TV and movie personalities are auctioned off to benefit Neurofibromatosis Inc., a “non-profit organization whose mission is to provide services to individuals with Neurofibromatosis (NB) and their families. NB is an unpredictable disease that cases tumors to form on your nerves, sometimes resulting in disfigurement, paralysis, deafness, blindness or cancer.”- From the Doodle Day website.

The auction just went “live” yesterday and will be ending on Sunday, May 23rd (also the day the series itself ends with the big LOST finale!). So, if you are interested in helping a great cause go ahead and bid on the sketch, or any of the other drawings they have up for auction. Bid early. Bid often. Bid money. Thanks!

Since I missed last week’s LOST “Sketch o’the Week” and since yesterday’s sketch of Juliet… well… sucked, I thought I’d do a second one today. Here is Nestor Carbonell as the ageless Richard (i.e. Richardo) Alpert.

I debated whether to even post this caricature of LOST’s Elizabeth Mitchell as Dr. Juliet Burke, since I lost the likeness somewhere along the way between the rough sketch and the final washes. However, seeing as how I didn’t post one at all last week I’d better get something up today.

Click for a closer look…

Today the interwebby will be full of tributes and remembrances of Frank Frazetta, who passed away at the age of 82 yesterday… ones that will be much more eloquent and personal than anything I could say (including this one by my pal Ed Steckley). I never met the man, but I am like so many who were in awe of and inspired by the work of this master artist. As a young reader of the Robert E. Howard “Conan” stories (and the pastiches of Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp that were camouflaged among Howard’s actual tales), the cover paintings of the Ace paperbacks were my first real exposure to the work of Frazetta. Frazetta’s fantasy illustrations were so charged with mood, savagery and movement they literally seethed and smoldered from the cover of these books. As beautifully rendered as the other cover illustrations of Boris Vallejo were, there was always something elemental and primal that put Frazetta’s work on a level all its own.

The piece above was always one of my favorites of those covers, depicting a scene from Howard’s “Rogues in the House”. In the tale a young Conan, set free from jail and hired by a local statesman to assassinate a priest who is a political rival (and who also happens to be a minor sorcerer) named Nabonidus, ends up trapped in the priest’s mansion with two unlikely companions… one is the statesman who hired him in the first place who, having been wrongly informed that Conan’s escape had not happened, went to kill Nabonidus on his own. The second was Nabonidus himself, whom they find unconscious in the dungeons of the building. Nabonidus explains that his giant ape-like servant Thak suddenly went wild and attacked him, casting him into the dungeons, killing his other servants and now haunts the halls of his house wearing his own scarlet robes. The creature has rudimentary intelligence, and is immensely strong and quick, able to tear a human being limb from limb in a flash. Half crazed with fear, Conan leaps upon the back of this impossibly powerful, ape-like being with nothing but a single knife as a weapon in an all-or-nothing attempt to kill and get free. Frazetta’s painting captures the ferocity and power of Thak and the battle frenzied terror of Conan in mid attack with seemingly effortless strokes of the paintbrush.

Frazetta was a contemporary and good friend of several MAD artists and collaborators including Nick Meglin, George Woodbridge and Angelo Torres, being one of the members of the “Fleagle Gang” as these guys called themselves. Despite being good friends with several involved with the magazine, Frank only did four pieces for MAD, three back covers and a front one in later years… mainly because of Gaines’ work-for-hire arrangement and policy of keeping all originals. Here’s my favorite of the Frazetta MAD jobs:

Click for a closer look…

The world lost one of the true greats yesterday. However as with all the really great artists they never really leave us. Frazetta’s work with continue to inspire new artists forever… it’s as close to immortality as humans can get.

Grrrrreat…. “Jimmy Jamz” of Super Experts USA reveals exactly how to get your work into MAD Magazine. It’s almost the exact path I took to break in… except I sent them work from about 6th grade on. Now the work will be even more scarce for everybody at MAD. Thanks a LOT, Jimmy Jamz!! :mad: