Tom's Mad Blog
June 20th, 2013 | Posted in General
The above part of an old MAD piece featuring actor James Gandolfini, who unexpectedly passed away yesterday. What a terrible shame, at 51 he should have had many years of thrilling audiences with his fantastic talent. I drew Gandolfini many times in MAD, including “A MAD Peek Behind the Scenes on the Set of the Sopranos” in MAD 422, “America’s Next Top Mobster” in MAD 482, and a MAD 20 piece in issue 485 where we showed a number of different, and better, ways “The Sopranos” should have ended. Here’s a few of those in tribute to James Gandolfini: The Gallagher Ending The Newhart Ending… READ MORE
June 19th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Speaking of Perry White, this week’s sketch is of actor Lawrence Fishburne. I’ve been watching the new TV series “Hannibal” this spring since I am a big fan of (almost) all of Thomas Harris‘s books, but I am giving up on the show. Fishburne’s job portraying FBI boss Jack Crawford is one of the few good things about the series, however. READ MORE
June 18th, 2013 | Posted in General
I took my three youngest kids to see Man of Steel over Father’s day weekend. Overall, I liked the film quite a bit. I was a little surprised at the volume of angry fanboy reaction online… most seemed to think Christopher Nolan and Zack Synder missed the boat on the character. I read some comments saying Superman was a “homicidal monster”, “soulless” and that there was “no character development”. They must have been watching a different movie than the one I saw. SPOILER ALERT!! I cannot examine the character decisions at the root of this film without revealing major plot moments, since they define the… READ MORE
June 17th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Clicky to embiggen… I finally got permission to be able to post a peek at the art I did for MAD #521 for the article entitled “Casebook: Spyfail- The Battle of the Bonds”, written by Desmond Devlin. It took a little longer this time because the exclusive first sneak peek at the article was promised to another website, who didn’t bother to run it, so I had to either wait until they did run it or until enough time had passed that it didn’t matter. This was a fun project in that I got to draw all the actors who have played Bond throughout the… READ MORE
June 16th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I just recently downloaded a drawing app for my iPad (Sketch Club) and picked up a fairly cheap stylus from Amazon. It’s my first experience doing any kind of digital doodling but it’s proven to be a fun place to start. Because of the whole touch pad scenario, I’ve found on more than one occasion that my hand would rest on the screen and inadvertently draw strokes I didn’t intend. As a result, I hold the stylus much differently than I would a regular pen and it’s slightly altered the style of my drawings (for the better. I think). Is this something you also… READ MORE
June 14th, 2013 | Posted in General
READ MORE
June 13th, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
Of the many interesting things that happened with respect to self-publishing my book, one of the most surprising was finding a very unexpected market for it: wood carvers. Apparently caricature is something many wood carvers are interested in, either by actually carving caricatures out of wood or using some of the principals of exaggeration and expression found in caricature art in carving fictional characters and anthropomorphic animals. I have several woodcarver shops that buy books directly from me wholesale to sell in their shops, or at their booths at the many trade shows and conventions dedicated to this art. Last month at the Pittsburgh Cartoon… READ MORE
June 12th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I am really swamped right now coloring a big job on the computer, so this week we are going to have to go with a quick digital warm up sketch of an easy target. Here’s Ian McKellen in his role of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings and the recent first installment of the Hobbit films. This took about 12 minutes including the gray washes. I did a Gandalf for the SotW some years ago but never really liked that take… even though this is a loose, speed drawing I think the results are better. READ MORE
