Tom's Mad Blog

Merry Christmas!

December 24th, 2012 | Posted in General

Here’s hoping everyone has a fun and safe holiday, whatever you may celebrate, with family and friends. READ MORE

Sunday Mailbag

December 23rd, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag

This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get, so every year or two I repost this mailbag from 2006: Q: How much should I charge for an illustration? A: I get individual e-mails occasionally asking for advice on what to charge on this project or that kind of job, and the problem is that the question in basically unanswerable. It is always “that depends”. By the letter of the law the discussion of how much to charge for the same kind of service or product between two competing sources of said service or product is called “price fixing”, and is quite illegal… READ MORE

Death of Magazines Greatly Exaggerated

December 21st, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing

While I do freelance illustration for a variety of clients including some animation, advertising, product illustration, etc., the majority of the work I do is illustration for magazines. For the under thirty crowd, those are these things that are printed on dead trees requiring ambient light to read, feature no clickable links to anything and do not instantly add your completely irrelevant and often anonymous “opinion” on their articles in a comment section… with magazines those are called “letters to the editor” and take months to get published, if they ever do. Putting the snarkiness aside, I do seem to get a lot of sympathy… READ MORE

Workplace Poster Art

December 20th, 2012 | Posted in General

Clicky to Embiggen... As promised, the final art for that workplace poster I posted the rough sketch of yesterday. If anybody is interested, here is the copy that accompanies the image: T E A M W O R K It’s a combination of first-class individual strength and effort … mutual support and encouragement … and a willingness to go down to the mat for the camaraderie and good morale that build success. That’s what these workplace posters I am always doing are… messages about teamwork, customer service, stress management and similar concepts with a humorous (hopefully) image to help make the point. I have been… READ MORE

Sketch o’the Week

December 19th, 2012 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week

Clicky to embiggen… Off on a family trip for the holidays, so I’ll have to cheat this week and post the (very) rough sketch of a recent workplace poster job as the SotW today. I’ll post the final art tomorrow. READ MORE

On the Drawing Board- 12/18/12

December 18th, 2012 | Posted in On the Drawing Board

As is somewhat typical over the holidays, pretty quiet on the freelance front. Very little going right now: Marlin Workplace poster Warner Bros product illustrations MAD #520 assignment (forthcoming… not sure what it is yet) That’s about it. The image above is a rare private commission done for General Mills for an executive who was either retiring or getting promoted. I used to do quite a few of these kinds of corporate commissions, including several for General Mills, but not so much anymore. Big companies would commission me to do a caricature illustration of an employee or executive who was retiring, being promoted, having a… READ MORE

Me Gallery Updates

December 17th, 2012 | Posted in General

I’ve been terrible about updating the other areas of my website lately (for the last two years, actually), but this weekend I finally got around to updating my Portfolio, MAD Art and especially the Me Gallery. If you have never visited the Me Gallery, you are in for a treat. For the last 13 years, I have been collecting caricatures of myself done by different caricaturists from all over the world. At the beginning most were from other members of the International Society of Caricature Artists (formerly the National Caricaturists Network) done at their annual convention. However after I started to post them on my… READ MORE

Sunday Mailbag

December 16th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag

Q: Do you/ have you ever use pigment liner, brushpens, manga graphic pens, calligraphy pens with chisel nibs, any fibertip or fineliners from Stabilo, Shinhan, Sakura etc. inplace of crowquill, say for Mad assignment. If you’ve tried them how do like them. A: Yes, I do use a variety of oddball pens when I am inking jobs, particularly for MAD. I’d say 98% of my inking is accomplished with a brush or a pen nib. I use a combination of these for different line qualities and thicknesses. I’ll use a brush for the big, sweeping, bold lines. A Gillott 303 or a Hunt 102 does… READ MORE

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