Tom's Mad Blog
January 15th, 2018 | Posted in Monday MADness
Dave Berg was a contributor to MAD for 46 years, from his first appearance in 1957 up until his death in 2002. He did quite a few different things for the magazine early on but he was most famous for his feature “The Lighter Side of…”, which first appeared in MAD #66 in October of 1961. When Berg died in 2002 he had a number of “The Lighter Side of…” gags in the works for MAD #427, written but unfinished. MAD assigned these to eighteen different MAD artists to complete and published them as a tribute to Dave in that issue. These included work by… READ MORE
January 14th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: At a workshop you mentioned you use multiple photos for each caricature you develop. Can you explain how you analyze multiple photos and bring them together into one drawing? A: Not for each caricature, but for important ones, yes. Photos lie to you. They are only two dimensional and factors like lighting, focus, angles, and even odd expressions can give you the wrong information when trying to really capture a subject. You can’t really do a caricature from a single picture of someone you are not already familiar with. What you are really drawing is a caricature of a photo, not a person. You… READ MORE
January 12th, 2018 | Posted in News
Speaking of workshops, my first workshop of 2018 started just a few minutes ago here in Los Angeles, CA! I am doing another one in the same location next weekend. Above is the “class illustration”. On the workshop front I am sold out in Atlanta (Feb), Toronto (June) Switzerland and London (Aug). I have a few spots left in Chicago (April) and Long Island City (May) and that one that suddenly opened up in Dallas (Mar). I am looking into possible locations and dates in Washington DC in July and Las Vegas in September, and maybe another here in Minnesota in October. Nothing solid yet,… READ MORE
January 12th, 2018 | Posted in News
I just had a spot open up in the previously sold out workshop in Dallas on March 9-11th. This has been an odd one. I usually have one, maybe two people drop out (especially when the deadline for payment of the balance of tuition comes nigh) but I have had an unusual number back out for the Dallas workshop. I have burned through my waitlist and now have a spot open and no one waiting on it. So, good news for anyone who wants to get in on the class! Claim that last spot here! READ MORE
January 11th, 2018 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Here’s a look at a cover illustration and some spots I did for Scholastic back in 2007, for one of their classroom magazines. The cover story was about election primaries and the process political parties went through to decides their candidates. That was back when that process actually yielded the most competent candidates. If I had this to do today instead of a race it would be a pro wrestling cage match complete with pieces of razor blade hidden in the candidates hand tape. READ MORE
January 10th, 2018 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
The second of my caricature sketch series of 60’s Batman TV villains, Cesar Romero as “The Joker”! I’m sorry if anyone was waiting for certain of these sketch subjects to appear in hopes of buying the originals. The first four, last week’s Frank Gorshin, this one, and Burgess Meredith and Lee Meriwether the next two weeks, are already spoken for and pre-paid (!). READ MORE
January 9th, 2018 | Posted in Stuff from my Studio
This is by far the thing that most visitors to the studio flip out over, especially after they are told it’s not a statue but a wearable costume. This is a screen-accurate replica of the Batsuit Val Kilmer wore in 1995’s “Batman Forever”. A terrible film, but a great costume (except for the nipples… but the chicks dig them). The armor is latex rubber glued to a Lycra bodysuit and painted in rubberized paint. The cowl is likewise latex rubber, as so is the cape. The gloves and boots are real leather, except for the glove “fins”, which are urethane rubber. The bat emblem is… READ MORE
January 8th, 2018 | Posted in Monday MADness
Here’s a look at both the finished art and the (very) rough pencil sketches for MAD‘s parody of the TV show “Two and a Half Men” from MAD #450, February 2005, written by Arnie Kogen. The bottom right panel of page features a caricature of Grant Geissman playing the guitar. Grant is a historian /expert on EC Comics and MAD Magazine, the author of several books on both subjects, and a longtime friend of MAD. He’s also a world class musician and composer, and he wrote music for the TV show “Two and a Half Men”! Thus, the cameo. See the note? Just letting the… READ MORE
