Here is a series of spot illustrations I did a few months ago for Penthouse for their February issue. They are illustrating a “timeline” feature similar to the one I did for St. Patrick’s Day about a year ago. This timeline follows a typical guy’s day on Superbowl Sunday. Here are a few of them, pencil roughs and finals:

Breakfast of Champions: hot wings

Checking out the neighbor’s hot wife! She is… OOOH! NACHOS!

Getting pissed at the hipsters

The inevitable end of the evening

I did a few extra sketches and the editors chose the six they liked the best (only four pictured, you’ll have to buy the latest issue of Penthouse to see the rest… if your wife/girlfriend will let you that is). Here are the two that didn’t make the cut:

Overeating… Superbowl tradition

This was going to show a caricature of Chris Berman on the TV screen, since apparently real sports fans hate his schtick. I didn’t bother to draw him as I knew this one probably wouldn’t get chosen… too confusing a gag.

Q: During the last 15 years what caricature or drawing skill have you developed the most?

A: All of them.

I debated whether to use this question, as that is really the only answer. I don’t know what else to tell you. As an artist, unless you completely focus on only one thing to the exclusion of all else (faces for example), you are going to improve your overall drawing skills with constant work and practice. It’s gratifying to be able to look at work I did 15, 10, 5 or even just a few years ago and see glaring faults that today would never have gone unnoticed and uncorrected. Growth as an artist is the most exciting thing to see. It makes all the hard work put in to achieve that growth worthwhile.

Want to see an example? Here is a page from an issue of NOW comic’s Married… with Children featuring Christina Applegate from 1992, so this is 17 years old:

Ugh.

Now here’s a page from my parody of two years ago of “Samantha Who?” from MAD, also featuring Christina Applegate… so this is 15 years of improvement under my belt:

Not the best example but I can certainly see a huge difference in virtually every aspect of the work… caricatures, expression, visual energy, composition and layout, storytelling, perspective… just plain ol’ better drawing.

The best part? Even after just two years I see lots of things in this more recent piece that I’d have changed or made different if I were doing it today. Christina’s face in panel one is awkward, and her hand is gigantic. The expression and head angle is also too similar to the one in panel two, and I should have changed one or the other. The standard “pointy finger” pose is something I used to screw up a lot by making the index finger too big for the rest of the hand, as in panels one and five. The window/floor position in panel five is confusing. Etc.

I’ve always said if you look at something you did five years ago and are not dissatisfied with it, or better yet downright embarrassed by it,  you aren’t trying hard enough.

Thanks to Robert Sharp 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!

Q: My question is about the placement of the people you draw in a humorous illustration. I know you have to deal with art directors that probably help a little, but how do you decide where to place the people, props, etc? And is there a way to learn how to get to the “placement” decision faster and at the same time relaying the message you are trying to make to the viewer? Is there a book or coarse that will help, or just keep looking at the art of other artist like yourself?

A: Composition is one of those things that is difficult to teach to someone because there are so many elements that come into play yet there are few hard and fast rules to adhere to. It’s a little like trying to explain how to ride a bike. When you are on a bike, you can feel when you are balanced and you can feel when you are going to tip over. I follow no real conscious formula when it comes to composing an illustration… it’s all about achieving that feeling of “it’s working”. Yet composition is the weakness of many a terrific artist.

When I consider the composition of a single illustration I really have no rules or guidelines or anything I can explain as to where my composition comes from. Basically I read over the art direction, start visualizing in my head and then do several sketches as experiments for composition. It is very much a feel-as-I-go process. The only things I really consciously think about are three main elements: focus, balance and tangents.

Focus-

Focus is simply what is supposed to be the most important thing about the illustration… what is the message? What is the element I want people to focus on? That should be be the centerpiece of the illustration. That means it’s literally in the center or where ever your eye is drawn to in the piece. This can be accomplished in so many ways it’s impossible to list them all. You can have the eyes and reactions of any figures in the image leading to the focus. You can position objects or negative space between objects to lead to the focus. You can use contrast, color or lighting to bring attention to the focus. Every “scene” presents some way of accomplishing this, so it is a matter of solving the problem for a specific illustration.

Balance-

This is simply the overall solid and substantial feel of an image… the balance. Like my bike riding analogy, this is really more of a sense than it is a calculation. Just like you sense yourself being balanced or tipping over on the edge of some object, looking at an illustration I sense if things are not balanced. Then I adjust things by adding or subtracting elements to the illustration, until that sense of balance returns. Like focus, each image is different and how you achieve balance is unique to the illustration.

Tangents-

Finally I check things over to try and make sure I avoid tangents, which are bad for composition. A tangent is when the contours of two objects touch or almost touch in a given image, creating an awkward juxtaposition which interferes with the depth and readability of the illustration. It creates confusion as to what object is in front of what other object, and is distracting. You fix this by either separating the objects in question or by overlapping them more significantly.

Avoiding tangents is composition 101, but that’s the only composition class I had and the rest has been all faking it for 20 some odd years.

The best I can tell  you is when you have a sketch of an illustration laid out, tack it up on the wall, step back from it and take a good look. Is it awkward? Is it heavy on some side or another? If so you need to work on the composition.

Thanks to Lee Fortuna 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!

Lot’s of projects going on the board right now…

• Animation Character Designs- Political caricatures to be used for some animated segments in a documentary, wrapping those up this week.
• Personal Commission- I was honored to be asked by a cartoonist I greatly respect to do a caricature of a famous friend of her’s as a birthday present. I might be doing this digitally now.
• Movie Poster- A very simple design and illustration for previously mentioned documentary
• Movie Storyboards- More work on that documentary, now I’m doing the storyboards for the animated sequences as well!
• Workplace poster job- my usual monthly assignment

Last Wednesday I posted as my sketch o’the week the pencil rough for last month’s poster illustration job. Here’s the final inks and color image for that project:

Click for a closer look…

Click for a closer look…

Looks like I only have about 5 more years of doing these monthly before I can have another “Great Art Blowout Sale”.

Q: Working as a freelance artist, how do you financially plan for retirement? As artists, I don’t think most of us ever plan to completely “retire” but by being a freelancer you definitely have to create your own pension. Do you simply put a percentage of your income away each year?

I’m making an assumption here but, seeing how selling your originals in the future might be a part of your income, what are some of the practices you keep when preserving your artwork? I feel like it’s very easy to forget about the future and not have a plan because it seems so far off for beginning freelancers. Is there any advice you’d like to give young whippersnappers like myself when thinking about preserving artwork, retirement or any other aspects of the future?

A: Being self-employed has a lot of advantages but a lot of disadvantages as well. No company health insurance to buy into for example, which leaves the self employed without the buying power of an employer to get their insurance costs down. Another disadvantage is no company retirement program to be able to participate in. All self employed people need to think about the future and make some sort of plan for retirement. You cannot count on Social Security… that program will not survive the retirement of the baby boomer generation and is on the verge of bankruptcy right now.

It’s hard to think about retirement when you are a young person, as it seems so far away, but when you are young is by far the BEST TIME to get a retirement plan in place and start making contributions to it. That’s simply because the longer you have to put money away and let it gain interest/dividends the more money it will be worth at retirement, and the better that money will be able to weather economic bad times like we have been experiencing the last year or so (although things have been looking up recently). Consider this: let’s say you take one dollar and invest it in some mutual fund vehicle that averages a modest 7% return a year. If you invested that dollar at age 45, when you are 65 it’s worth $4.14… a little over 4 times your initial investment. If you invest that same dollar at age 25, when you are 65 it’s worth $16.02, or over 16 times your initial investment and 4 times what your earning power is for the same dollar at age 45. That means that every dollar you invest at age 25 is already worth four times what it would be if you wait until age 45 to invest it.

There are a lot of other reasons to invest as young as possible as well. You can afford to go with more aggressive growth (riskier) vehicles because you have a lot of time before that money is needed and you can handle the more severe ups and downs of those kinds of investments. Over a long period of time the aggressive growth and growth investments yield higher returns, but as they are more volatile you need the longer time periods for the good to average out over the bad years. As you get older your “portfolio” (meaning the list of the various things you have invested in) will need to start easing away from the growth vehicles to the more moderate “growth and income” level investments, and eventually to the much safer but lower yielding “income” investments as you near retirement.

There are a lot of different ways to save for retirement that also provide immediate tax benefits. Things like an individual 401k, or a SEP IRA (Simplifies Employer Pension Individual Retirement Account) provide tax relief on the money you put into the account. There are different rules for how much you can invest a year for the tax savings, various levels of administrative fees and penalties for early withdrawal and other considerations like being able to take out a loan against your balance depending on the type of retirement plan you are contributing to. You can choose what kind of vehicles you invest in within the 401k or IRA, which can be all sorts of different kinds of funds (index funds, b0nd funds, money market funds, stock funds), stocks… there is a lot out there and it can be confusing.

My advice is to seek out a professional financial consultant for a plan. You do not have to pinch and scratch to save for retirement when you are young, as you need the money to do things like buy your first house, start a family, etc. However setting a little aside at a young age really pays off in the end. Find a consultant you trust. Ask older friends and people you respect who might be knowledgeable about investments if they have any suggestions. Don’t use the phonebook… get a referral from someone.

Just remember that the hardest part is doing it in the first place. You don’t have to contribute a set amount or at all if you are struggling, and can put money away as best you can for that far off retirement. Even just a few hundred dollars a year invested when you are in your twenties will be of enormous benefit.

As to the other half of your question, I don’t count on my original art being worth a plug nickel as I get older. I keep it all and occasionally sell or donate pieces, but none of it will really be worth enough for it make it part of my retirement plans.

Thanks to Chris Houghton 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!

The world of caricature lost one of it’s true giants Tuesday.

David Levine, probably best known for his caricature illustrations for the New York Times Book Review, died on Dec. 29th at New York Presbyterian Hospital from prostate cancer and other ailments. He was 83 years old.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Levine’s work was as influential on caricature in the 20th century as that of Al Hirschfeld, Mort Drucker or any legend of that art form. His distinctive linear crosshatch style is also one of the most imitated by other artists. His caricatures were sharp, biting social and political satire that showed a deep and thoughtful analysis of the world. He rarely pulled any punches, and is regarded by many as one of, if not the most, important political caricaturist of the last century. He was also a very accomplished painter and teacher.

I’d met Mr. Levine on two occasions. The first was at the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben weekend in 2000 in New York City, where he did a talk for the attending cartoonists. That Reubens had the highest attendance of any in the last decade, so I didn’t get to talk much with him amid the crowds.

The first time we met was more low key, and I like to tell the story about how David Levine gave me the best career advice on freelance illustration I’ve ever gotten… in a hotel men’s room.

It was later in 2000 and I was then president of the National Caricaturist Network. The American Association of Editorial Cartoonists happened to be having their annual convention in Minneapolis that year, and I organized an NCN mini-con in Minnesota around a panel discussion on caricature that the AAEC was having as part of their convention programming. On the panel: Philip Burke, David Cowles, Bob Staake and David Levine. The panel discussion was great and there were about 20 NCN members in attendance.

After the panel we met the participants in the area outside the meeting rooms, and I got a chance to talk with Mr. Levine. He told me about how he’d gotten started in the business, his process, some of the favorite things he’d done, etc. He asked about my career goals and we had a nice conversation. I actually hit him up to be a main guest speaker at one of our NCN conventions but he said he really hated to travel to do that kind of thing and that the AAEC really had to twist his arm to get him to come to Minneapolis, but if he ever had a convention in New York that he’d be happy to explore the idea.

A short time later I was in the bathroom when Mr. Levine entered and came up to the urinal next to me. We were observing the male ritual of staring straight ahead into the tiles while engaging in small talk as we relieved ourselves, when he told me the single best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten on doing freelance illustration for a living:

“People.” He said. “That’s the key to making a living and being successful as a freelance illustrator. It’s all about people and building relationships with people.” He went on to say that doing good work was what got you your first job, but continuing jobs was about building relationships of trust and respect with art directors, because they invariably moved on to other art director jobs and passed your name on to other ADs, who would give you jobs and then you’d build a relationship with them, eventually creating a large web of contacts and people who know you were a professional who did not only good work but who did it in the professional manner that appreciated. That was some great advice and I have built my career around it.

As we were flushing and zipping up, he commented: “Shithouse wisdom… it’s the best kind.”

So true. Rest in piece, Mr. Levine… and thanks for sharing that wisdom and your art with the world.