Tom's Mad Blog
April 21st, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: After reading about your fourth printing of the book (congratulations!) I was wondering if you could dispense any advice about self-publishing art books and how to do it successfully. What’s the secret? A: I appreciate the thought but I am hardly an expert in self publishing. I’ve only done one book, and some very unique circumstances came together to make that book work out pretty well. I’d be happy to share what I have learned along the way, but the formula that worked for my book is very specific. First off, there’s a post I wrote some time ago about why I self-published the… READ MORE
April 19th, 2013 | Posted in News
The National Cartoonists Society will be holding its annual Reuben Award Weekend on May 24th-26th in Pittsburgh, PA, and part of the festivities includes a public cartoon event on Sunday. The Toonseum and the NCS Foundation, along with several local sponsors, are putting on a special public event to raise money for a worthwhile cause on Sunday, May 26th in the 900 block of¬¨‚Ć Liberty Avenue in Downtown Pittsburgh. Here is the official press release: First Annual Pittsburgh Comic Arts Festival! Pittsburgh, PA-Hundreds of cartoonists are descending on downtown Pittsburgh as the city plays host to the National Cartoonists Society Conference. It is the first… READ MORE
April 18th, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
Clicky to Embiggen… Last week in the Sunday mailbag I promised to post about a recent job I completed that reminded me (again) of why I turn down most jobs that involve doing caricatures of the actual client, or their employees. See that post for the reasons why, but here are the gory details of the job that resulted in the final art above (I have changed the names to protect the guilty): I get a call from a company that works in the film industry that wanted me to do a parody/homage of the classic Animal House movie poster, only with caricatures of their… READ MORE
April 17th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
We continue with our series of caricatures from Doctor Who? with the 4th doctor, Tom Baker. I was told by a few Whovians that the appropriate expression for Baker’s doctor should be a giant, goofy grin, but I like some of his bemused expressions better. READ MORE
April 16th, 2013 | Posted in General
We interrupt this art blog for the occasional review of geeky gadgets, and today I’ll be reviewing that Kickstarter darling, the Pebble smart watch. I usually try to review gadgets from an art-centric point of view, meaning if the product has any relevance to an artist, what that might be. The Pebble has basically none, but it is quite handy in real life. For those not familiar with the Pebble, it’s a Bluetooth watch that pairs with your smart phone and displays notifications like incoming texts or phone calls on its face, as well as doing a few other functions like controlling your music playback.… READ MORE
April 15th, 2013 | Posted in News
I am totally out of copies of The Mad Art of Caricature. I am supposed to have the fourth printing in stock by the end of April, but we will see if the shipping people stay on schedule. In the meantime, there are still a few copies on Amazon, and they sell it cheaper there (but unsigned!), but they will be out shortly as well. My apologies to those looking for a signed copy. READ MORE
April 15th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a peek behind the scenes of a past job I did for MAD… the entire feature’s pencil roughs for the parody of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1” that appeared in MAD # 507 , written by Desmond Devlin. Clicky and to embiggen: Here’s what the final splash looked like: READ MORE
April 14th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve seen you occasionally write that you do not do personal commissions because you don’t like having to deal with the subjects of your caricatures thinking their caricatures don’t look like them, and asking you to make them slimmer or to ignore features they don’t like… my question is did you really have a lot of problems with that when you did do personal commissions (your caricatures are not particularly mean-spirited, and I think your likenesses are usually spot on), and do you ever have problems with celebrities you draw in MAD not liking your caricatures of them? A: In all fairness, the reason… READ MORE
