Tom's Mad Blog
November 26th, 2019 | Posted in News
Here’s another “Workshop Warmup” sketch from my recent workshop in San Francisco… Patton Oswalt! These warmups are an exercise we do one morning of the class where someone suggests a subject, I do an image search for a picture and we all work from that image for about 15 minutes. Speaking of workshops, both my Burbank class in January and my Las Vegas class in February are sold out. If you missed out, you can sign up for the waitlist by clicking on the links. The workshop in Phoenix in March is cancelled… sorry Arizona but I looks like won’t be back there again. I… READ MORE
November 25th, 2019 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here’s the clever cover for MAD #11 (art by Mark Summers), which goes on sale Dec 18th… somewhere. Your local comic book shop or via your mailbox if you still want to get your MAD on dead trees. Yes this issue is mostly new content. The entire MAD 20 is new. Sergio’s “A MAD Look at…” and Spy vs. Spy is new. I did two of the MAD 20 features. I’ll post the list of contents after the release date. READ MORE
November 24th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I buy a lot of original MAD art, and a good bit of it comes with a red cellophane overlay (is it rubylith?) Was that an alternate way to do shading? Or did it replace the duo shade method. It seems to be hand cut to the areas it is shading, and seems tedious. Did the artist have to do it? A: This question was asked in a comment on a post a did a few months ago about the duo-shading process I duplicated the look of in the Tarantino retro-parodies MAD did. I thought it would make for an interesting mailbag topic. Be… READ MORE
November 22nd, 2019 | Posted in General
I just posted my European workshop dates and locations for 2020! I’ll be in Vienna, Austria and Dublin, Ireland in June. This will be my only workshops overseas next year, so jump on board… or else wait until 2021! READ MORE
November 21st, 2019 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
For about 15 years I did work for a client called “The Marlin Company”, who provided signage and visuals for workplaces that helped employers communicate messages to their employees about things like handling stress, safety, etc. Their main product was called the “Marlin Board”, which was a wall frame with multiple different sized slots that accommodated various sized graphics and signage. Companies would subscribe to their service and periodically get new, industry-specific signs and graphics that would fit into the Marlin Board and replace the previous lot. Nearly every month I did a 17″ x 17″ humorous illustration depicting something to do with teamwork, safety,… READ MORE
November 20th, 2019 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I’m reposting this old sketch of Neil Young because it appears in a new book called “Neil Young– Art of Gold” compiled by Herman Verbeke and published by Witsand Publishers of Belgium. It’s a wonderful collection of artistic depictions of the legendary musician that includes paintings, drawings, sketches, cartoons in both portrait and caricature form. Looks like you can only get it via the publisher directly or through bol.com. READ MORE
November 19th, 2019 | Posted in General
Last week Wednesday I was honored to be a guest speaker for “Pixar University” at the Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA! This all came about thank’s to Pixar’s Josh Cooley, whom I met many years ago when he was a guest speaker at the annual meeting of the National Cartoonists Society North Central Chapter. Josh was a Pixar story artist at the time and had just worked on “Up” and was then working on “The Incredibles 2”. How the chapter officers convinced him to to go Omaha to speak at our little get together I have no idea. Turned out Josh was a big… READ MORE
November 18th, 2019 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at the pencil sketches of the first “Xander and Kam’s Sneaky Previews” written by Ian Boothby and appearing in MAD #2 (the 2018 one, not the 1952 one). Clicky any to embiggen… READ MORE
