Q: Great art you posted the other day for the upcoming NCS Reuben awards. I was wondering what the requirements are to become a member of the NCS?

A: Thanks for the kind words about the Reuben illustration. The National Cartoonists Society is an organization of professional cartoonists that started in 1946. You can read all about the history of the NCS here.

The requirement for membership, at least as a regular member, is that you are a professional cartoonist i.e. you make a living drawing cartoons. That encompasses a large gamut from syndicated cartoonists to animators, comic book artists, illustrators, gag cartoonists, greeting card creators, etc. There are also Associate, Honorary and Retired membership classes.

Here is what the NCS website says are the requirements for consideration for regular membership:

ELIGIBILITY FOR REGULAR MEMBERSHIP:

Cartoonists who are currently earning the major part of their income from cartooning and have done so for at least the past three years; Work must be of a high professional quality and their reputation good.

Application must include two letters of recommendation from NCS members, a short biographical sketch and samples of current work bearing a signature. Applications must be accompanied by a check covering one year’s dues, which will be refunded if the candidate is not accepted by the Membership Committee.

A candidate is eligible for membership when accepted by a unanimous vote of the Membership Committee.

So… you must be able to demonstrate you have earned the majority of your income directly from cartooning for the past three years, and you must be sponsored by two members in good standing with a letter of recommendation from each. Members get the excellent NCS newsletter “The Cartoon!st”, can attend the annual Reuben Awards weekend and more importantly get to know their fellow cartoonists and the people whom they both admire and respect in the industry. If you qualify and are interested in becoming an NCS member get all the details here.

There are also local chapters of the NCS, and you DO NOT have to be a regular NCS member, or even qualify as one, to be part of a local NCS chapter. If you are an amateur or part time cartoonist, or just have a great interest in cartooning, look up your local chapter here and find out about their get-togethers and events.

I have been a member for 11 years now, and was sponsored by the great Mort Drucker himself, which was a huge honor. I’m currently serving as a vice-president of the organization. Joining and being a member has been and continues to be one of the high points of my career.

Thanks to Richard Griffin 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’ve been advertising on and off in Serbin Communication’s Directory of Illustration for about 15 years now, and while the results aren’t exactly staggering I usually get enough new jobs from my ad to pay for it. The real value of it comes from not picking up new jobs per se but new clients from whom I get ongoing work. I still believe the best way to market yourself as a freelancer is a combination of an internet presence, direct mailing and ads like this that get distributed to tens of thousands of buyers of illustration.

The toughest part for me is always putting the page together and finding work that shows a range of subject matter and techniques. This one runs the gamut from my line and color style (Brett Farve illo originally for the Minneapolis Star Tribune) to my new colored line style (guys fighting and guy eating hot wings for breakfast, both for Penthouse) my digital painting style (the Gates vs. Crowley/ Obama referee image done for MAD), a straight up cartoon (Piranha done for the Minnesota Twins) and just for fun I tossed in several of my LOST ink-wash caricatures… I admit did a little digital touching up on some of them as the scans were a bit washed out and some of the detail was being lost (pun intended).

We’ll see how effective the ad is this year.

I was sent a link to this story from MAD editor John Ficarra earlier this week. The story is from a blog called “Scouting NY“, where a gentlemen named Nick Carr recounts tales of some of the hidden gems and interesting locations he’s stumbled across in the course of his work… scouting locations in New York City for films. This particular story is about 225 Lafayette Street, currently condos on the corner of Spring Street in Soho, but back in the 1950′s it was an office building with one very MAD tenant: Entertaining Comics (E.C.) run by a young Bill Gaines, who had been forced to take over the comic book company (then called “Eductional Comics”) when his father died in a boating accident. This building is where MAD was conceived and first published.

Carr tells a great story not just about the early history of 225 Lafayette and MAD, which he does succinctly and pretty accurately, but also about how much of an influence MAD was on him as a child. It’s a familiar story.. the kid who gets his first issue of MAD, loves it and how it warps him and changes his views on humor, satire and looking at life in general. The best part? Carr’s first issue of MAD was #310, in 1992. I doubt he’d agree with the grumpy old codgers who still whine about how MAD went “downhill” and lost all of it’s “quality” right after they grew up… whether that had been the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s or whenever. Carr’s story is proof of the truth of long time MAD artist and current art director Sam Vivano‘s answer to the question “When was MAD at it’s peak in quality?”: “Whenever you started reading it.”

Click for a closer look…

I wasn’t going to post about this job until I finished up a second similar commission for a friend and colleague who has been patiently waiting for me to do his painting for so long it is just plain embarrassing, but considering a number of people have e-mailed and Facebooked me about it since Al twittered (tweeted?) a picture of the art I might as well tell the story. That other long LONG overdue original is almost done anyway.

I was contacted by the brilliant greeting card/illustrator/author/cartoonist Sandra Boynton a couple of months back about doing a private commission for her. I know Sandy through the National Cartoonists Society where we are both members, and I was flattered she’d thought of me for this particular project.

It seems Sandy is a long time friend of the famous “Weird” Al Yankovic, who I am sure needs no introduction… at least not for anyone in the U.S. If you grew up in this country, You’ll know Weird Al is the king of musical parody/comedy. Since the mid 80′s his parody songs lampooning both the music and genres of the songs themselves and life in general have been of enormous popularity. Turns out Al just tuned fifty years old, and Sandy wanted to commission me to do an original for him. Al is a big fan of MAD, and she wanted to get him a caricature done by one of their artists.

My thought was to do something a little more “MAD” than just a caricature, so I thought a mock cover might be a good idea. The result is above, done in a combination of acrylic, water  color and airbrush. Here is the original pencil sketch I sent for Sandy’ approval-

Click this one for a closer look as well…

I got a nice e-mail from Al a few days ago that included the picture below, saying he loved the art. I’m glad, I’ve enjoyed his work since high school and it was a real privilege to get to do this little painting for him (and for the talented and charming Sandy, of course). Happy belated 50th birthday, Al!

Sorry Folks, but Wednesday’s “Sketch o’the Week” is going to have to turn into Thursday’s “Sketch o’the Week” this week. No time today as I have burned all my midnight oil and then some, and am still going on a late job.

Today is my birthday… 44 years old. Yikes. Time does fly by. I don’t feel a day over 48.

So what am I going to do on my birthday? Why, work of course! Sadly I got behind on a MAD job that is desperately needing to be done so I will be working on it all day. However, tonight The Lovely Anna and all four of my kids will be taking me to the ballgame at the shiny new Target Field where we will (hopefully) watch our Minnesota Twins beat the snot out of the Detroit Tigers. I will also be ignoring my diet for the evening which means hot dogs, steak sandwiches, french fries and possibly a beer or three.

That’s me in the pic with my birthday present, an Apple iPad. Since I am trying to get this job done I have had very little time to play with it so far, but promise an art-centric review later this week. First impressions are that it is just as advertised… a much more capable mobile media consumption device than the itsy bitsy iPhone, but NOT a replacement for a laptop.

Back to the drawin’ board!

Last year I was one of several judges in the first annual Toon-ED “Toon Awards”, a cartooning compeition for college age students organized by cartoonist Ken Alvine and the Toon-ED Awards Committee. This year’s competition is getting started and the details are at www.toon-ed.com.

Toon-Ed is dedicated to educating the student of cartooning and provides a chance to showcase students cartoon art that are enrolled in post-secondary schools, colleges, art schools, and universities. The competition and resulting show of all entries and art from professional cartoonists is a wonderful event.

If you or someone you know qualifies for inclusion in the competition, check out the details and participate.

Q: Is there a trick to caricaturing beautiful women? I find it incredibly difficult, as I know many do. But I’ve found it hasn’t gotten any easier as my overall drawing skills have improved, which is frustrating.

A: The following answer was a not-so-long-ago post here on The MAD Blog… But this is something many caricaturists struggle with and deserves another look:

One of the most common problems I hear about from other caricaturists is that women are harder to draw than men. Many struggle to make their caricatures of women look feminine, and often feel their female subjects look like “drag queens”.

I think it’s a myth that women, particularly beautiful women, are harder to caricature than men. Women have the same sets of features that men have, but the need to differentiate the masculine from the feminine forces the caricaturist to modify his or her approach (in most cases) to the different sexes. That doesn’t mean that it’s more difficult to draw either sex than it is to draw the other, but you do have to keep the masculine/feminine difference in mind if you want to avoid the “drag queen” look that sometimes results in a caricature of a woman.

Superficially there are a lot of facial elements that identify a given subject as male or female. Thick eyelashes, full red lips, soft complexion, high cheekbones, more curved and thinner eyebrows… these are feature descriptions that are distinctly “feminine”.  You may notice these items have one thing in common… they are all features that women traditionally use makeup to accentuate or to create. If women don’t have them in abundance naturally many use makeup to create them or to accentuate what they do possess. Take your cues from what makeup artists do to see what kinds of features say “female” (and conversely what to avoid on a male caricature to prevent them from looking feminine). If I am drawing a man who happens to have thick, long eyelashes (many do) I will play that DOWN in many cases to accentuate the masculine in the drawing.

These are only superficial things, though. The real differences between men and women’s faces lay under the skin… with the bones and the skull. This is the basis of the “drag queen” look… the human eye and brain is able to differentiate between a male and female face based on difference and indicators that are more than surface features. Hence a drawing of a face with lot’s of female makeup level features on the surface but with the structure and other aspects of a typical male face looks like a man wearing makeup.

Skeletal differences between the sexes are well documented. It’s not just the different chromosomes that are behind it, either… the high levels of testosterone at puberty help enlarge the bones of males, while the high levels of progesterone also help develop male characteristics like greater height and a narrower pelvic bone. The differences also extend to the skull, which is actually the second easiest part of the skeleton forensic scientists can use to determine the probable sex of a skeleton, the pelvis being the first (learned that on NCIS!). In fact the mandible (jaw bone) alone gives examiners a 90% accuracy in determining the sex of a skeletal subject.

The female skull is generally smaller and lighter than the male’s. Elements like the brow ridge and mandible are usually less pronounced. The female skull tends to be wider than the male’s which leads to a general softness of features, more prominent cheekbones and a less prominent jawline. The areas above the eye sockets in men tend to be more blunt while the brow itself is more pronounced, but in women that same area is sharper (thus the purpose of “eye shadow”) while the brow protrudes less.

The jaw is actually a key element to the masculine/feminine definition of a subject, and represents the most dynamic differences between the faces of the sexes. The combination of the wider skull, the less developed mandible and the propensity of the female chin (mental protuberance) to be smaller and more pointed as opposed to a man’s wider and more square one makes the female jaw distinct from the male jaw. The upper (top part of the) chin is wider and higher vertically while a female’s is more rounded and shorter. In fact the male chin is generally larger in every dimension. Big, square jaws inevitably read as masculine and small, narrow and pointier ones read as feminine.

Jackie O‘s features are classic feminine

(more…)

Click for a closer look…

For the last several years I’ve had the honor of doing an illustration for the National Cartoonists Society’s annual Reuben Award weekend that they use to adorn the official T-shirt, programs, etc. I usually draw caricatures of the guest speakers and recipients of NCS honors like the Milton Caniff or the Silver T-Square awards amid some scene that has something to do with the location of the event.

This year there were a LOT of guest speakers and award recipients, and the Reubens are being held in Jersey City, New Jersey at a hotel on the Hudson overlooking the Manhattan skyline. I briefly toyed with a “Sopranos” or “Jersey Shore” theme, but quickly nixed the former as old news and the latter as unworthy of more attention than it already gets. So, NCS president Jeff Keane and I went with the above theme… since nobody was seriously hurt in that incident it seemed like a decent gag.

Since there are so many cartoonists in this image here’s a key to the faces:

1. Isabella Bannerman
2. Rina Piccolo
3. Anne Gibbons
4. Benita Epstein
5. Stephanie Piro
6. Margaret Shulock
7. Stephen Silver
8. Stan Goldberg
9. Mort Drucker
10. John Reiner
11. Larry Katzman
12. Joe Kubert
13. George Booth
14. Steve Brodner
15. Bill Plympton
16. Yaakov Kirschen

Whew. Absolutely no pressure having to draw caricatures of master caricaturists Mort Drucker, Steve Brodner, Steve Silver, Bill Plympton and John Reiner…

Anyway, it’s all in good fun and the Reubens will be happening May 18th-30th in New Joisey.