Tom's Mad Blog
April 12th, 2013 | Posted in General
My pal Stephen Silver, who if you are not familiar is a well-known animation character designer, illustrator and cartoonist, has been on a real tear lately trying to educate young or inexperienced artists looking to make a living with their work about not giving it away. If you follow his twitter feed or visit his YouTube channel you’ll find many videos where he dispenses some passionate advice about not falling for attempts to get you to do work for little or nothing when you should expect to be paid fairly. One of his biggest pet peeves is the “art contest”, where some entity stages a… READ MORE
April 11th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
As promised here is Doctor number three as portrayed by Jon Pertwee. By the way, these are all studies for a piece I am doing of all 11 Doctors, to debut as a limited edition print at Comic Con this summer. It will be in a similar format to my “secret agent man” print from two years ago. These are only studies. The final will be much more thought out caricatures of the subjects. READ MORE
April 10th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I know I’m supposed to be drawing the various Doctors from Doctor Who, but I just pulled two all-nighters in a row and I don’t have the energy. Tomorrow will be a bonus SotW of the Third Doctor. In the meantime, here’s one of Bill “Bubba” Clinton from a very recent job. READ MORE
April 9th, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
I did the cover of the latest issue of the UTNE Reader, now on news stands. The folks at UTNE favor my “colored line” style, as I used is a few previous covers for them. Here’s a peek behind the scenes of this freelance project. The job: design and illustrate a cover depicting how President Obama’s immigration reform policies are contradictory, both making easier and harder to become a legal immigrant. The editors wanted a large wall on the border with a crowd trying to get in, and Obama looking like he’s welcoming them but still has the wall. The proplem was they wanted me… READ MORE
April 8th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Yesterday was the season premier of AMC’s “MAD MEN” (which I didn’t watch because I was working on a deadline), so this week’s “Monday MADness” is my art to MAD‘s parody of the show from MAD #508, written by Arnie Kogen (clicky on any to embiggen): READ MORE
April 7th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you alter your approach in any way when your subject is effectively “pre-caricatured”, like, for example, UK Energy Minister John Hayes? A: I guess that depends on what you mean by “pre-caricatured”. I would take that to mean one of the following: The subject has so many obvious features to exaggerate that a caricature is almost superfluous. The subject has been caricatured by others so often that their caricature has become a clich?¬©. Some specific caricature you have seen of the subject influences your own caricature. Based on your example, I would assume you mean the first one, but I’ll answer all three… READ MORE
April 5th, 2013 | Posted in General
I’ll be doing a short talk and signing copies of my book The Mad Art of Caricature! tomorrow (Sat. April 6th) at 2:00 pm at the Burnhaven Library in my hometown of Burnsville, MN. I am hopeful that tens of people will show up. I am also hopeful no one at the library will check my library card account and find out about that copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover I’ve had checked out since 1982. READ MORE
April 4th, 2013 | Posted in News
I was sad to hear that well-known film critic Roger Ebert passed away today at age 70, after a long battle with cancer. I always liked his take on films, and while I did¬¨‚Ć not agree with them all the time, they were always presented with just the right amount of wit, sometimes of the sharp-tongued variety. He was also a long-time fan of MAD. Here’s a quote from his forward from the book MAD About the Movies: “I learned to be a movie critic by reading Mad magazine… Mad’s parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin…of the way a movie might… READ MORE
