Tom's Mad Blog
August 12th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How far do you feel a freelancer has to wade into the murky waters of online social media? What do you view as wasting time, and what actually shows results? A: A pertinent question in this day and age. Personally I have found social media like Facebook and Twitter do little or nothing for my bottom line with respect to freelancing. By “bottom line” I mean the only thing that counts . . . putting jobs on the board. I have not gotten even one single, real job directly from my social media presence. That includes LinkedIn. I may be abnormal in that regard… READ MORE
August 10th, 2012 | Posted in News
It’s customary for the recipient of the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Award to do the cover of the post-Reubens newsletter/magazine The Cartoon!st. I was so honored this past May, so here is my cover illustration with self-inflicted caricature and oft-repeated gag of me curling the Reuben statue. The Cartoon!st is a terrific publication, available for only NCS members (if you are not a member…sorry!). The issue contains a fantastic Reuben wrap-up article by member Ed Black. I got mine in the mail today, so I figure it’s in the wild and ok for me to post the cover art . . . but maybe I… READ MORE
August 9th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
This is just a small sample of a larger poster/publication cover job I did back in May for an NBA related project. Depicted is current NBA czar David Stern. I am not sure I’ll ever get permission to share the entire image. . . it seems to be one of those jobs where once the work is done there are complications with the project and it may never see the light of day. Who knows? Some jobs are like that. If I ever do get the go-ahead to show it here, I will certainly do so. READ MORE
August 8th, 2012 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s subject: America’s Olympic gymnastic sweetheart Gabby Douglas. READ MORE
August 7th, 2012 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Illustrator extraordinaire Drew Friedman‘s blog is always worth a visit, but he just posted a particularly fantastic story about a visit he made to the offices of MAD Magazine . . . in 1974 at age 15! Complete with pictures, this is the way a visit to the MAD offices should always unfold. Do yourself a favor and go read it. READ MORE
August 6th, 2012 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Sitting at Charles Schulz’s drawing board The Lovely Anna and I are on the way back from the west coast to Minnesota (the no coast) after a fun visit to San Francisco, Santa Rosa and the Sonoma wine country. We have family in this area so it’s always a treat to come out to see them and this beautiful part of the country. While there I did a few speaking engagements and a workshop on caricature at the Cartoon art Museum and the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. At the Schulz museum, I did an adult class on drawing caricatures, then a presentation… READ MORE
August 5th, 2012 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Q: I just have a couple of quick questions for you. How big do you draw your art? When you do a piece for MAD, like a two page spread for instance, how big is the original drawing? You manage to get such a lot of detail in, so I can only imagine that it would be drawn quite big. ¬¨‚Ć Lastly, do you recommend always drawing big when practicing? A: I usually do my non-MAD illustration work at 150% of whatever the print size is going to be, which is an unwritten traditional standard in illustration. So, a full page magazine illustration (given an… READ MORE
August 3rd, 2012 | Posted in General
It is believed that the first piece of art was painted on the wall of a cave by early man. The second piece of art was also painted on the wall of a cave, but the prehistoric man that painted it was heard to complain that “they just don’t make this paint like they used to.” So began a long tradition of artists complaining that the art supplies they make today are no where near as good as the ones they used to make. Art supplies are discontinued, formulas changed, manufacturing methods altered, materials switched, etc. and nothing makes artists who use these supplies more… READ MORE
