Tom's Mad Blog
July 19th, 2020 | Posted in General
Q: Are there elements of illustrations that you don’t find fun or enjoyable, that you routinely have to motivate yourself to labor through? For example, I find substantially less pleasure in drawing backgrounds and would much rather focus on drawing the subjects. If there is something you find less fun, what do you do to combat that? Do you draw the boring stuff first to get it out of the way? Curious about your process! A: I can find interest in any aspect of a job, but you do need to get in a different mindsets for different parts of a project: Conceptual Stage- This… READ MORE
July 18th, 2020 | Posted in
The internet has really changed how freelance artists get work and make a living. Search engines are powerful tools that can instantly connect artists with clients that would otherwise have never been able to find them. It also allows freelance illustrators to turn their art into a kind of “stock house” of images that can allow you to resell the rights to the same images to different clients. Sometimes even art you do just for fun ends up generating work or income. Case in point- my series of caricatures of U.S. presidents. I originally did these for table centerpieces for my final NCS Reuben Awards… READ MORE
July 17th, 2020 | Posted in Daily Coronacature
I couldn’t resist doing a quick warmup sketch of today’s “Daily Coronacature” subject, the great American storyteller Mark Twain. Yes, “Tom’s Daily Coronacature” is still going on. Others have taken over the task of posting a new subject daily, and it’s still going strong. Check it out on Facebook, or search for the hashtag #tomsdailycoronacature on Instragram or Twitter. READ MORE
July 16th, 2020 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
It’s crazy, but seven years ago almost exactly TO THE DAY (July 15th, 2013) I posted a look back at this parody of the TV Show “Glee” from MAD #506 after the untimely death of show star Cory Montieth. Here we are again on the sad occasion of the death of yet another young cast member from the show, Naya Rivera. That makes three including Mark Salling who died in 2018. So, in honor of Ms. Rivera, here is the complete “Glee” parody, written by Arnie Kogen, along with the pencil sketches. Incidentally, three of my kids make cameo appearances on the splash page! READ MORE
July 15th, 2020 | Posted in Classic Rock Sketch Series
Here’s my caricature of punk rock icon Patti Smith for both my SotW and Tom’s Daily Coronacature. As usual, the original is available in the Studio Store. READ MORE
July 14th, 2020 | Posted in News
The printed copies of Sketch o’the Week Vol. 3: Coronacature Edition just dropped on my doorstep, so this is going from “preorder” to “in stock” today! We’ll be busy getting all the preorders shipped out tomorrow and the next day. We are down to only 17 original sketch editions left (that’s the one where you get a signed copy of the book AND one of the original sketches from the book), so grab one while you can! READ MORE
July 14th, 2020 | Posted in General
The National Cartoonists Society, of which I am a longtime member and a past president, just released a fun kid’s activity book as part of their “Cartooning for Kids” program. Originally this was going to be a printed book that the NCS would have available for schools, kids organization and for our children’s hospital visits, but the coronavirus scuttled all that. Instead, the NCS has made it available as a PDF that anyone can download and print out (although they will eventually have a printed version). They are suggesting a donation of any amount you choose for the book, all the proceeds of which will… READ MORE
July 13th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at the complete parody of “The Wizard of Oz” from MAD #505, Oct. 2010, written by Desmond Devlin. with the increasingly poisonous partisan dialogues of the political talking heads of the time as a target (little did we know). This was a really fun but exhausting one to work on, considering I needed to do caricatures of dozens of political pundits as either munchkins or other characters. It’s always challenging to try and incorporate both a caricature likeness and some other recognizable visual identity like the Tin Man, Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion into the same character. Here… READ MORE
