By: Tom Richmond
January 5th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
How about something a little different this week? The piece above is of longtime editor of MAD Magazine Nick Meglin. When Nick retired from MAD several years ago, they put together a “MAD Book” for him. This is something they used to do for Bill Gaines after each of the famous MAD trips. All the artists and writers who went on the trip would do a piece of art or prose inspired by their adventure, often times very “blue”, off color ,or outrageous, and these pieces would be assembled into a book presented to Bill as a thank you. At some point they started doing… READ MORE
January 4th, 2015 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Sebastian Kruger was the guest speaker at the International Society of Caricature Artists’ annual convention and competition. Does the National Cartoonist Society conventions have special speakers? If so, who does the NCS turn to for inspiration, seeing that each member is (in my book) already an inspiration? A: Just some background for readers: The International Society of Caricature Artists (formerly the National Caricaturists Network) is an organization of professional caricature artists from around the world. Each year the ISCA has a convention and competition where anywhere from 150 to 250 caricaturists gather at some hotel somewhere and draw each other for four days. Then… READ MORE
January 1st, 2015 | Posted in General
Here’s hoping your 2015 kicks 2014’s ass. It’s not looking good, I am already tired of “Back to the Future” references. READ MORE
December 31st, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Kind of busy right now so I don’t have time to do a real SotW… here are a few concept drawings I did this past summer for a company that provides all the artwork for the Palm restaurants around the country. If you’ve never been to a Palm, it’s a restaurant with the walls covered in cartoons, caricatures and illustrations depicting famous people from the area, patrons, etc. as well as general gags and humor. I did the following as concepts for possible inclusion in the redesigned Palm in L.A. I have no idea if any of them actually made the walls down there. If… READ MORE
December 30th, 2014 | Posted in News
Posting on Tom’s MAD Blog for the next week or two might be a little spotty as we get ready to launch a brand new, redesigned website in early 2015! I’ll still post here and there, but regular posting activity won’t resume until after the launch of the new website. READ MORE
December 29th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness features my artwork from Dick DeBarolo‘s parody of “Hell’s Kitchen” in MAD #470, October 2006. Below are the pencil roughs, final colored art and (bizarrely) the third and forth pages inked and set up in the layout with text in place. I cannot remember why I did that with pages three and four… must have been for a presentation or something demonstrating the pre-color artwork in place. Anyway, clicky any to embiggen: Final splash page art The pencil roughs… Inked with copy, page 3 and 4 spread Page 3 final Page 4 final Panel three features “Pearls Before Swine” cartoonist Stephan… READ MORE
December 28th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Drawing is just one aspect of the art of live caricature. Another aspect is smalltalk with your subject. You have already written about an extraordinary conversation “drawing somebody naked”. Can you give an example of a typical conversation during a live caricature? Are you talking about the weather or something like that? And what are you doing if your subject is a child or a person who does not understand English?¬¨‚Ć A: You’re right about drawing being only one aspect of the art of live caricature. Live caricature at its best is a performance art. Those who can combine great drawing with great “banter”,… READ MORE
December 26th, 2014 | Posted in General
Last May at the NCS Reuben Awards Weekend in San Diego, Reubens Master of Ceremonies Tom Gammill put together a great video intro featuring a montage of clips from “The Simpsons” that featured gags about cartoons, comics, cartoonists and MAD Magazine. There were a surprising number of them, including a few cartooning luminaries like Cathy Guisewite, Sergio Aragon?¬©s and Mell Lazarus (among some others I can’t quite remember) being “Simpsonized”. After the video there was an audio clip featuring Homer Simpson as voiced by Dan Castellaneta opening the evening: I did the above quick ink and watercolor caricature as a thank you to Dan for… READ MORE
