Tom's Mad Blog
October 4th, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
A great article on a great cartoonist: Al Jaffe in the NY Times. Al’s getting a lot of press lately now that his book Al Jaffee’s MAD LIFE is now available… in fact you can order it here. My copy is on the way. Al Jaffee is one of the true geniuses of visual humor, and at 89 is still sharp as the proverbial tack and producing great work. To say Al’s life has been “eventful” would be the ultimate stupid answer to a snappy question, if you’ll pardon the reversal. The article linked above touches briefly on what has been a life of epically… READ MORE
October 4th, 2010 | Posted in News
This past weekend I attended the annual meeting of my chapter of the National Cartoonists Society AKA the North Central Chapter In Omaha, Nebraska. We were treated to beautiful fall weather, great speakers and events and great company. The speakers, meeting and events all took place in the Old Market area of downtown Omaha, a charming series of bricked streets brimming with local restaurants, pubs, shops and galleries. The event was organized by Omaha World Herald editorial cartoonist and chapter member Jeff Koterba and hosted by KANEKO. KANEKO is a combination gallery, museum studio and educational facility and is self described as “an open space… READ MORE
October 3rd, 2010 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Like you I use a nib (i.e. a dip pen and ink) to draw cartoons with but unlike you I don’t have deadlines to worry about. Artwork inked with a nib can take a long time to dry before you can erase any pencil lines and scan into the computer to be coloured. Do you have a number of pieces on the go at any one time or do you have to just go and do something else. I can’t imagine a client would accept, “sorry, the ink isn’t dry”! A: Inking with a dip pen does lay down a lot of ink and… READ MORE
October 1st, 2010 | Posted in News
Okay… so I didn’t FLY to Omaha, Nebraska for the annual fall meeting of the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society which I am attending today and tomorrow. I didn’t have a cartoon of my trusty Buick barreling down the highway with the Iowa State Patrol in hot pursuit. A full report of our antics on Monday… READ MORE
September 30th, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
MAD writer extraordinaire Desmond Devlin sent me a link recently to this fantastic Flickr “set” entitled “The Art of Jack Davis” which features some great quality scans of about 200 pieces of artwork by one of the greatest cartoonists and illustrators who ever lived. Warning: do NOT click on the above link unless you are prepared to spend at least an hour perusing some little seen gems including album covers, posters, advertising art, MAD work and much more. READ MORE
September 29th, 2010 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is of a rather obscure subject. I was catching up on some Netflix movies in the home theater the other day and I watched “28 Weeks Later”, the not so great sequel to the pretty good “28 Days Later” apocalyptic horror film. The character of Tammy was played by a young English actress with the unusual name of Imogen Poots. She had a very haunting look with heavy eyelashes/eyeliner and icy turquoise eyes, a strongly angular face shape with a distinctive nose and bruised looking lips. Quite an arresting look that inspired me to draw her. Anyway, I did this one partly… READ MORE
September 28th, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Last night episode four of the new MAD animated show on the Cartoon Network aired another of the segments I worked on… a parody of the TV show “Glee”. This was easily the most work I’ve done so far for a single segment. I think there were 14 main characters to draw plus a number of cameos, extra faces and expressions. To try and save time I did them in tight pencil form and then colored them as opposed to doing any polished linework… the result was a lot rougher than I had hoped. However I thought the animation folks at the WB studios did… READ MORE
September 27th, 2010 | Posted in Freelancing
Last week the Sunday Mailbag question was about how I seem to do a lot of political type work. Well, it IS an election year, and so I’ve been getting my fair share of projects relating to politics. I must say the conservatives are spending a lot more money than the liberals this time around… almost all my projects recently have been for the right side of the aisle. Here is a the progression of one from last month. This more painted style caricature of Sen. Harry Reid is being used for some kind of campaign promotion: This is one of a few rough sketches… READ MORE
