My signed/numbered limited edition print “Secret Agent Man” has sold out completely, so that’s that. I have deleted the high resolution color file, and the original inked artwork was sold months ago, so the 250 numbered prints out there in the hands of the rubes lucky folks who purchased them are all that there will ever be. Thanks to everybody who bought one, and to those who helped spread the word about it!

This worked out pretty well, although I think I may do a smaller number or prints next time. There definitely will be a next time. For San Diego Comic Con 2012 I will have another limited edition print in a similar vein but with different subject matter, which while there I will sell for cheap with the purchase of a copy of The Mad Art of Caricature!, and separately as well for an inflated, outrageous price. Likely I will have some left over again and they will get offered for sale here. Some of you who are not my mom might even buy one!

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Tags: 007, James Bond, print, Secret Agent Man

Team Cul de Sac is the brainchild of Chris Sparks, who has worked tirelessly to organize this fundraising program for Parkinson’s research. It’s a part of TeamFox, the Michael J Fox Foundation’s fundraising arm, which in the last year alone raised almost 4 million dollars for research. The fundraiser revolves around the brilliant comic strip Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson, an incredibly talented cartoonist who happens to have Parkinson’s. Oh, and he just won the Reuben for “Cartoonist of the Year” from the National Cartoonists Society last May.

Chris and Team Cul de Sac invited professional cartoonists, illustrators, artists and animators to donate original art made especially for a book, published by Andrews & McMeel, about Parkinson’s awareness, and the response was pretty outstanding. You will find the work of some of the biggest names in cartooning in those pages. Part of the profits from the direct sales of the book will benefit the Michael J Fox Foundation, and the original art will be auctioned as part of the fundraiser with all of auction money going to MJFF.

Chris and his company, Sparking Design, just announced that the Team Cul de Sac book is now available for pre-order directly from the publisher. You can order a “Regular Edition” copy, signed by Chris, for $35.50, and a limited edition of 150 “Author Signed and Numbered” copy signed by Chris for $65.50, both prices include shipping AND the Regular Edition includes a $5 donation to the afore mentioned Michael J. Fox Foundation, while the Author Signed and Numbered version includes a $20 donation to same. No word if copies signed by Richard will be available. By the way, Richard recently went on a hiatus from his strip to receive and recover from treatment for Parkinson’s… this book is needed now more than ever. The book is set to be released June 5th, 2012.

Incidentally, the book will also be available on Amazon, but only buying directly from the publisher will result in a donations to the MJFF. Amazon doesn’t really need your money, but Parkinson’s research does—so follow this link to pre-order.

Here is my meager contribution to the book:

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Tags: Parkinsons, Richard Thompson, Team Cul de Sac

The internet is abuzz with righteous indignation over the proposed “anti-piracy” legislation currently under consideration by congress, namely the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). I won’t bother to describe the bills—if you don’t know about them by now then welcome to your first time on the internet!

As a creative professional, I hate online piracy and copyright infringement, but I am not willing to kill the patient to cure the disease. These bills are going to be largely ineffective at best, and at worst very damaging to legitimate websites because they allow too much room for abuse. Internet piracy IS a huge problem, and it would be nice if something real could be done about it, but these bills are not the answer. I could go on, but Neil Gaiman and company say it better here than I could:

January 17, 2012

An open letter to Washington from Artists and Creators

We, the undersigned, are musicians, actors, directors, authors, and producers. We make our livelihoods with the artistic works we create. We are also Internet users.

We are writing to express our serious concerns regarding the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

As creative professionals, we experience copyright infringement on a very personal level. Commercial piracy is deeply unfair and pervasive leaks of unreleased films and music regularly interfere with the integrity of our creations. We are grateful for the measures policymakers have enacted to protect our works.

We, along with the rest of society, have benefited immensely from a free and open Internet. It allows us to connect with our fans and reach new audiences. Using social media services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we can communicate directly with millions of fans and interact with them in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services – artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result.

We are deeply concerned that PIPA and SOPA’s impact on piracy will be negligible compared to the potential damage that would be caused to legitimate Internet services. Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods.

We urge Congress to exercise extreme caution and ensure that the free and open Internet, upon which so many artists rely to promote and distribute their work, does not become collateral damage in the process.

Respectfully,

Aziz Ansari

Kevin Devine, Musician

Barry Eisler, Author

Neil Gaiman, Author

Lloyd Kaufman, Filmmaker

Zoë Keating, Musician

The Lonely Island

Daniel Lorca, Musician (Nada Surf)

Erin McKeown, Musician

Benjamin Goldwasser, MGMT

Andrew VanWyngarden, MGMT

Samantha Murphy, Musician

OK Go

Amanda Palmer, Musician (The Dresden Dolls)

Quiet Company

Trent Reznor

Adam Savage, Special Effects Artist (MythBusters)

Hank Shocklee, Music Producer (Public Enemy, The Bomb Squad)

Johnny Stimson, Musician

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This week’s SotW subject is Saturday Night Live alumni Chris Farley. I did a few studies of various late, portly comedians as part of a project I worked on… maybe another one will show up next week Wednesday.

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Tags: caricature, Chris Farley, sketch

Michael Cavna of the Washington Post‘s Comic Riffs blog on cartoons, comics and culture posted his list of the Top 12 Books of 2011 That Made Us Smile… and The Mad Art of Caricature! tops the list! Thanks, Michael!

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Tags: The Mad Art of Caricature!

Anybody wanting to learn how to earn a living in comics in the 21st century would be well served to attend this if they can:

Comics Seminar to be Held in Las Vegas February 25th & 26th

How to make money with comics

Chad Carpenter, the cartoonist behind the popular newspaper comic strip Tundra, and Bill Kellogg, Tundra’s marketing director who has managed to get Tundra in over 500 newspapers in less than six years, are hosting a seminar in Las Vegas on how to make money with comics. They hosted this seminar for the first time just over a year ago and it went over extremely well. Now, due to popular request, and the fact that they are from Alaska and it gets really cold there in February, they are going to do it again.

This is a “must-attend” event for anyone who would like to learn how to make more money with comics. The seminar takes place in Las Vegas this February 25th & 26th at the Tuscany Hotel & Casino and is open to amateur and syndicated cartoonists alike. There will be fourteen speakers over two days, sharing their knowledge on how to make money in different areas of cartooning. Topics include: How to get syndicated, self-syndicating, web comics, producing & marketing products, licensing, animation, building a Facebook following, and much more. There will be social get-togethers each night too with free beer, wine and snacks so attendees will have plenty of time to talk one-on-one with the speakers and other guests.

This Years’ speakers are:

• Chad Carpenter & Bill Kellogg – (Tundra Comics)
• Jack Newcombe – (President of Creator’s Syndicate)
• Tom Gammill – (The Simpsons)
• Mell Lazarus – (Momma and Miss Peach)
• Rob Tornoe – (Editorial and Sports cartoonist. Editor and Publisher of Punchline magazine)
• Adrian Raeside (The Other Coast, and writer for children’s shows such as Kid vs. Kat)
• Mark Parisi & Lynn Reznik – (Off the Mark)
• Mason Mastroianni – (B.C. Cartoonist and Emmy Award winning animator)
• Mick Mastroianni – (Writer for B.C., Wizard of Id and Dogs of C Kennel)
• John Read – (Publisher of Stay Tooned magazine)
• Daniele Corsetto – (Girls With Slingshots – web comic)
• Debbra Abeyta – (Newspaper pagination with Vertis)

The cost for the seminar is $375 and it is open to cartoonists and aspiring cartoonists of all ages. More information is available by going to the Tundra Comics web site at www.tundracomics.com and clicking the Las Vegas link.

For questions or more information, please contact Bill Kellogg at 907-441-6882 or bill@tundracomics.com.

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Tags: cartooning, seminar

Q: I’m enthusiastically working through your book. Aside from enjoying the art and fantastic tips, I’m really interested what you said about it taking 500 faces to really get the nuances of caricature / portraiture.

So to fully understand…. maybe naively so, I have set out to draw 500 faces. I really want to at least begin to recognize all the subtleties you mentioned… and to overcome some of the challenges I’ve faced while drawing portraits. A friend of mine said that it takes 1,000 attempts at a particular activity to beome an expert. My goals isn’t really to become an expert (a half expert is fine with me) so much as to further my own art and to help me grow as a hobbyist.

What else would you recommend artists do to grow and become better at achieving a likeness?

A: I think you are mistaking the difference between caricature and likeness. Here is the quote from the book to which this question refers:

The Mad Art of Caricature, Page 12:

In caricature, the old adage of “practice makes perfect” has never been truer. The ability to see doesn’t spring up overnight, and I often tell eager young caricaturists they have about 500 or so bad caricatures in them before they start noticing the subtle things that hide inside the ordinary face.

By the term “see” I am talking about not necessarily the ability to DRAW or to capture a likeness, which can be done without any exaggeration. I am talking about the ability to observe and notice the things about a face that makes it unique—the things that a caricaturist is going to want to exaggerate to create a caricature as opposed to a portrait. The “500 or so bad caricatures” I say a new caricaturist has in them is not about improving drawing skills or capturing a better likeness, it’s about developing your eye to notice those unique things through the simple medium of observing and then drawing what you observe. Of course the act of drawing over 500 caricatures will also improve an artist’s drawing skills as well as their observational skills as it pertains to simply seeing the facial features that a likeness requires be accurately drawn immensely, but it’s the development of the ‘eye’ to which I refer in that quote.

Additionally, those 500 drawings are not a threshold wherein drawing number 501 is like some switch was suddenly switched on and an artist’s drawings suddenly become successful. I actually use that number with my new theme park artists as saying that is about when they stop fighting with the tools and medium, start getting comfortable in the chair and faces start to look different to them as things jump out that previously went unnoticed. It is still an ongoing process, and at the end of the next 500 drawings, number 1,001 will look very different than 501 did as long as they continue to apply themselves.

Now, as to your actual question about what else (besides practice) an artist can do to improve their ability to capture a likeness…

Nothing. There is nothing else besides unyielding dedication and sheer, unrelenting observing/drawing that will help an artist become better at getting a likeness. Studying and incorporating different techniques are important, and can help an artist along the way, but there are no shortcuts. No amount of studying, reading, watching videos, listening to lectures or other sources of information on drawing can replace the act of drawing and what that does to your ability to make your eyes, hand and brain work together. It’s like swimming. You can read about how to swim, you can look at diagrams of the action, you can watch videos and have classroom instruction in swimming. Until you actually get in the water and start moving around, you will never be able to swim.

That is advice nobody really wants to hear, but it is the absolute truth. Talent is only part of the recipe. The most talented artist in the world would not be more than a mediocre artist if they never bothered to work at developing their skills. Modest talent with enormous work ethic and determination will beat out enormously talented but lazy artists every time.

Thanks to Steven White 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!

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Tags: How to Draw Caricatures, likeness, Mailbag, practive, question, The Mad Art of Caricature!

I read over on Mark Evanier‘s excellent blog that the short lived Bob Newhart sitcom series Bob is about to become available on DVD. It’s billed as “The Complete Series”, which is a bit of a joke as it only lasted 33 episodes, or about a season and a half. I remember the show very distinctly because it was, in a way, a moment of TV fame for the little group of theme park caricaturists I was a part of.

Kind of.

Sort of.

We went with it, anyway.

Set in present day (at the time 1992), the show’s premise was that star Bob Newhart’s character was a cartoonist and the creator of a 1950′s comic book superhero called “Mad-Dog”. The Wertham congressional sub-committee hearings had resulted his character being axed, and Bob quit comics and became a greeting card artist. 40 years later the rights to Mad-Dog are bought by another company, and Bob agrees to come on board to help revive his character despite their wanting Mad-Dog to become a violent vigilante. The studio Bob goes to work in is located in Chicago…. bear with me here, I am getting to the point.

Like all Newhart series, Bob is an island of common sense and normalcy in the midst of a group of nutcases and oddballs. The staff of this comic book company was no exception. It was peopled with all sorts of kooks. One of them was this druggy, spaced-out inker named Carl. Carl and Bob had this exchange in the pilot episode (I’m paraphrasing, it’s been 20 years since I saw this episode):

• Bob: “Besides inking, what other kinds of artwork do you do?”
• Carl: “I worked as a caricature artist at Six Flags.”
• Bob: “Was that interesting?”
• Carl: “It was brutal, man. Really cutthroat. You had to have a gimmick to make your work stand out.”
• Bob: “What was your gimmick?”
• Carl: “I drew caricatures with leaches on the faces.”
• Bob: “….. Leaches?”
• Carl: “Yeah. You know, Burt Reynolds… with leaches. Victoria Principal… with leaches.”
• Bob: “…”

No doubt after 20 years that actual exchange is very different on the upcoming DVD, but that was the gist.

Now, this took place in Chicago. The Six Flags he must have been talking about was Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, IL, a northern suburb of Chicago. I worked as a caricaturist at that Six Flags from 1985-1989 for Fasen Arts, who still had the concession there in 1992. Ergo, Carl was one of us!

Kind of.

Sort of.

I never drew anyone with leaches, but I was known to work in a clown smoking a cigarette in the background when the opportunity arose.

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Clicky to Embiggen

It’s been a long time since I got a new piece for the Wall of Shame, but this arrived in the mail the other day and is going to be proudly framed and hung in the studio.

For those not familiar with my “Wall of Shame”… I occasionally get calls from the producer, director or some star of a TV show of movie that I did the parody art for in MAD who wants to buy some of the original art. I usually cut a deal that includes my sending them an oversized print of the splash page to get signed by the cast and creators. You can see some of my little collection in these posts.

This one came about when I got a chance to meet MAD Men actor Rich Sommer here in Minnesota about this time last year. It took this long to get this back because the show went through contract negotiaions and a long hiatus, but they must be back to work as this little gem was at my door Tuesday. Signatures from left to right: Robert Morse, John Slattery, Elisabeth Moss, John Hamm, Jessica Pare, Jared Harris, Jay R. Ferguson, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Aaron Staton and Rich Sommer.

Working for MAD has it’s moments!

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Tags: MAD Magazine, Mad Men, The Wall of Shame

A quick sketchbook study of the late comedian and actor John Candy.

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Tags: caricature, John Candy, sketch