This is a job I did a few months back for Penthouse, now on the stands.

The assignment was an unusual one, and one I had to briefly consider if I wanted to do or not. Although I do not have a problem working for Penthouse (nor would I for Playboy) those would be the only two “adult” magazines I would agree to do work for… they have a certain mainstream acceptability that Hustler, etc. does not. Additionally, I would not accept a job even from them drawing nude women or a sexually explicit subject. I have zero problem with anyone’s right or willingness to do or publish work of that nature, but I would politely decline such jobs by personal choice.

This job did not call for that, but the subject matter was drug related. The subject was a list of 13 things a man can do and not be considered “gay” so long as they are stoned when they do it. Since I do work for several kids publications I was not sure I wanted to open that door, but I figured that is not far off from what you might see in MAD. Thus I accepted the job.

The list included things like “baking”, “buying shoes”, “swinging on a swing set”, “listening to 80′s pop music”, etc. The art director wanted to include several in a single image. We needed to show a macho guy stoned out of his mind doing stuff that was not very macho. Of course the problem was that many of these activities were done at different locations, so putting several in one scene was an issue.

Pencil Roughs

My solution was to use the smoke as dream-like balloons to show a couple of the list items from “off-site”. In an effort to make the guy as macho as possible, I made him muscular and square-jawed with a “Slayer” shirt on. Of course that’s a play on an old joke that says a man can be seen kissing another man, but as long as he pauses, throws up the devil horns hand gesture and yells “Slayer RULES!” he would not be considered gay. The actual joke is more graphic that that, but you get the idea. Anyway the baking stuff, bongos, “Duran Duran” on the stereo and the cotton candy cone are all list items. I was going to toss in a poster of Michael Phelps but we decided on the Grateful Dead instead.

Below are the inks and final art.

Final inks

Click for a closer look…

I actually used a pysdoneum credit on this job because of the drug related subject, but in retrospect that was silly. If I am willing to accept a job, it should be one I have no problem signing my name to. I won’t do that pysdoneum thing again… although the art director from Penthouse understood completely. He told me he has several artists who work for children’s entertainment companies that have contracts forbidding doing work for Penthouse, Playboy, etc. and they use other names for their credits when doing work for those publications. Interesting.

Q: When you do the splash page for say the “30 Rock” satire you did, how do you figure out how the background fits in reference to the characters? is there some simple geometry that you use? I always seem to have too big of a space, or everything looks like its getting crammed in. I am not really used to drawing characters in an environment, do you have any advise? Also when you do a big ensemble do you ever cheat and draw characters separately and add them or do you keep them the same from the rough stage?

A: Here’s the “30 Rock” splash referred to:

Click for a closer look…

It all starts with having to work out the placement of the “principals” with respect to the dialogue boxes. MAD initially sends me a layout:

This one was pretty easy, as there is very little dialogue compared to some I’ve had to work on. Obviously the characters speaking the lines need to be near their boxes… everything else is totally up to me.

The first thing I do is rough out the basic “scene” or environment, then place the principals in. Sorry I do not scan jobs in at these stages, so I have no visuals to demonstrate. Once I have the principals in place, I fill out the background adding elements and gags. There is no formula or system for this other than basic balance.

Click for a closer look

I add elements to the backgrounds based on the feel of balance in the piece. With the heavier number of principal characters on the right I needed some visual balance on the left, so I added the body guards, Rachel Drach and the visual gag of the “german shepherds” from Tina Fey‘s American Express commercial, plus her kid, the Alfred Emmy and the Lorne Michaels dartboard. Even so it’s a little right heavy, but it’s working. I have a more complete description of working with primary and secondary characters in this post.

Balance also means filling areas that have too much dead space with something to break it up. That’s where objects like the spilled coffee cup, script pages and stage lights come in. It’s a balancing act, because it would be easy to become too busy by filling every available space with something.

What I will do once the important elements are in place is to step back and look at the piece from a little distance, unfocusing my eyes or looking through squinted eyes. This eliminates the detail and allows you to look at the basic shapes and values. You have to use a little imagination, as the values you add later will change the balance. I knew the upper area would be heavy black, and where other black elements would be… in fact I actually roughed those values in at the pencil sketch stage… that helps.

I wish I had a magic bullet for this, but it’s always been a building and balance process for me without a formula or logical set of rules to apply.

As to your final question: I almost never draw the caricatures separately and paste them in… that inevitably leads to a vaguely disjointed and awkward feel to the illustration.

Thanks to Mark Grant 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!

For a one-armed artist I am staying pretty busy. Here’s what I’ve got going right now on the drawing board:

NCS Reuben T-shirt Illustration- Wrapping this up over the weekend. I will share it once I get the okay from NCS president Jeff Keane.

Cover art for Stay Tooned #4- I was honored to be asked to do the cover for John Read‘s terrific magazine. That I will finish next week.

MAD job- Two pager that got bumped from issue 500 and will now be in #501, so a ton of time before that is due.

Workplace poster- My usual monthly assignment from The Marlin Company. Incidentally they are preparing to sell individual copies of these posters as stock allows on their website, so when I get more info on that I’ll let people know if they are interested.

“Super Capers” DVD comic- Not much to this as all I did was crop and size the panels of the comic into a DVD video frame format. It will be included on the DVD release of the movie as a video comic.

Not much I can share at this time, but here are cropped sneak peaks from two recent jobs where I used the colored line technique I’ve been experimenting with. I will be able to show the full jobs plus sketches, etc. sometime later this month:

Slow going with only one arm… I am surprised to discover how much I actually use my left hand when working. Pencilling and inking become harder when I cannot support nor turn my board with my left hand. Inking is especially difficult and time consuming.

Just a few jobs going right now, and a few “in the can” as they say that I will be able to share in the next week or two. Here is the latest “workplace poster” illustration, the inking and coloring was done post surgery:

Pencil rough

Final Art

Q: I have a lot of trouble with facial hair AND head hair! I seem to freeze up when someone sits with 5 o’clock shadow beard or shaved head. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A: That question is difficult to answer because, like so many “how do I draw this…” inquiries, the answer is so dependent on the style of drawing. Someone with a more illustrative, involved style of drawing could not use the same techniques as someone who does a very cartoony style, or one that does a more graphic style. Therefore when answering such questions I invariably describe how I would do it, based on my style of drawing. You will have to take what you can from it and figure out your own solution. Many of the principals will apply to any style, though.

Drawing 5 o’clock shadow/beard stubble/beards on men (or on some ladies… now THAT is always fun) is not very difficult. It can be time consuming, especially the “3 day growth” kind of scruffy look, but the basics are constant and there a a few “don’ts” to avoid.

First off, you need to define what is the ‘beard area”. There are differences between men, but in general facial hair grows in the same places on all men:

With that in mind, you can just imagine the slow growth of a man’s beard from the first hints of 5 o’clock shadow to stubble to a multiple day growth to the beginning of a real beard. The trick is to make sure you shape the hair to reinforce the structure of the face underneath. Nothing flattens out a drawing more than facial hair that destroys the forms beneath it:

Let’s do this in stages, starting with 5 o’clock shadow. (more…)

Last month I got a call from the art director of Penthouse magazine asking if I was available to do a series of spot illustrations for a humor article about St. Patrick’s Day for their March issue. My immediate concern was whether the job entailed drawing any pornographic images. I won’t do that kind of work.

I was assured not, and that all I’d be drawing was a guy getting drunk out of his mind, fighting and eventually passing out in his own vomit.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with that!

The issue is out and here are a few of the spots that were used in the article, which is a “timeline” of a typical yuppie male’s St. Patrick’s Day:

I used a different technique for these, combining my typical linear drawing style with colored lines as opposed to black lines. The effect is a more painted, softer look but it still retains the cartoon look of my drawing style.

The folks at Penthouse liked it a lot and I am already doing another assignment for them. You can say what you want about magazines like Penthouse and Playboy, but they have long been filled with outstanding cartooning. I’m happy to call Penthouse a client.

Also the comp copies I got of the magazine with my illustrations in it seem to be very popular with the guys in my neighborhood. Several have asked if they can have one. Funny, they never asked if they could have a copy of one of my comped MAD Magazines before…

Q: When you get a job, are you usually given reference photos to work from or are you expected to have your own resources? (Assuming the subject in question is famous, not just Joe From Accounting.) For a job where the reference photo is not provided, where do find your references? Do you have a clip file of particularly nice, interesting photos that you clip from magazines? Do you ever freeze a video image from a movie or TV show to get a reference?

A: Since these questions all deal with reference I thought I’d answer them all at one time.

When you get a job, are you usually given reference photos to work from or are you expected to have your own resources?

I usually get my own references. Back when MAD had a larger staff I used to get pages of references that they had an art department person or some intern dig up for me, but I prefer to find my own references anyway because some pictures are useless for reference and I know what I am looking for.

For a job where the reference photo is not provided, where do find your references? Do you have a clip file of particularly nice, interesting photos that you clip from magazines?

I get 90% of my reference from the internet. Google internet search usually does the trick, although in the case of a movie this site is great for movie stills. What I generally do is create 13″ x 19″ sheets full of reference pics, one for each “character” or actor I am drawing and a few for incidentals like environments, vehicles, etc. Here’s a sample of a reference sheet I set up of Alec Baldwin for when I did the parody of “30 Rock” for MAD:

I try to get a variety of angles and expressions. I got all of these off the internet.

Back in the day I had what was called a “morgue file”, which was a big file cabinet full of tabbed folders with clipped pictures of celebrities from tabloids and entertainment magazines. Actually I still have the file cabinet and the morgue files but I haven’t clipped a picture in years… the internet is too easy to use for that purpose.

Do you ever freeze a video image from a movie or TV show to get a reference?

Sometimes. If I am doing a TV show for example I can either download an episode or two or burn one to a DVD and then do some screen captures from the show and get some very specific reference that way. With movies I can download trailers and freeze and capture scenes and faces. I honestly don’t do it too often with TV shows… regular reference pictures are usually enough for that, and I will play some episodes on my laptop as I am drawing out the parody so I can freeze the picture anytime I want a look at what some room or environment looks like, or if I want to draw a specific expression from a reference.

What I don’t do is scour the internet or DVDs for the exact expression and perfect reference for every single panel. That would take forever and frankly it would sap the life out of the artwork if I drew everything from specific reference. That would be boring. Reference should be used as a resource, not as a crutch.

Thanks to Robert and Margaret Carspecken 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!

Here’s what I’ve got on the board right now:

• Supercapers Comic Book- 13 page full color promo comic for the movie I did illustration work on. I was given two weeks to get this done, which is almost impossible so I am collaborating with my friend and ace comic book artist/inker Tom Nguyen on it. I’m doing the penciling, color and all design/layout while Tom is inking most of the book with me inking the caricatured faces and some other detail work. It’s been a long time since anyone else has inked my work, so this should be fun to see. Tom is one of the best inkers out there. The comic is going to be given away as a promo item at WonderCon in San Fransisco the last weekend of February. I will share some of it here on The MAD Blog once its released.
• MAD Job- Working on a two page gag article likely for #500 but might end up in #501. It’s one of those “evergreen” type pieces.

In the meantime, here is a job I did for movie industry magazine Fade In a few months ago. The issue just hit the news stands. It was a tough job, as the topic was discrimination in Hollywood. Short of throwing KKK hoods on studio executives or having some burning crosses in front of the Hollywood sign, it was difficult to come up with images that demonstrated the discrimination minority creators and actors/actresses deal with in the movie business. The main image was the client’s concept, playing on the popularity of superhero movies:

The idea is that the studio execs are ignoring black superhero films in favor of ones with white heroes. Apparently nobody wants to make a Black Panther, Luke Cage or Jon Stewart Green Lantern movie, but they will make The Hulk. The thing is, there are sadly few mainstream black superheroes anybody outside of comic book fandom has ever heard of (Blade comes to mind as one that went from relative obscurity to a three film franchise, but had anybody ever heard of “Blade” before the first film?), so that’s not exactly a strong message. Also, the Hulk is green… not white.

The other spots were illustrating specific stories of discrimination in the article.

A few other small projects in the works as well. Next week I should be able to share the artwork I did for an article in the March issue of Penthouse, which should be on the stands by then.

Something a little different this week for The Independent… one of the column’s characters is a groundhog in honor of Groundhog’s Day. I’m told we’ll be back to doing local politicians for next week’s column.

BIG, crazy MAD job on the board right now. This one has an odd backstory and is, as far as I know, unique in the storied history of the magazine. Naturally I will not be able to share any of that story until the job is in print, but as that will be NEXT MONTH in MAD #499 it won’t be too long before I’m able to tell the tale.

In the meantime I am working furiously on the project in question… no time for any other jobs. Before I got started on it late last week I finished this poster job for Marlin:

Job: Illustration of a boy who’s maybe 10 years old. He’s at the front door of a house, looking contrite, eyes cast downward. He’s wearing a baseball cap. He’s got a bat resting on a step, and is there to admit that he’s broken a window (which we can see on an upper floor). Standing in the doorway is an old man who is looking at the young guy admiringly and affectionately.

Initial pencil:

I decided to have the kid looking up at the window sheepishly and apologetically, because I thought I needed to tie the three elements together. The client disagreed, wanting the kid to instead be looking down and being very sorry and embarrassed. The also wanted me to make the old guy less smiley and more like he was appreciating the kid’s honesty in confessing but still not pleased his window was broken.

Revised pencil:

I was kind of under the gun with this, so I did the revision quickly right on the computer. The client liked this one.

Here’s the final:

Click for a closer look…