Tom's Mad Blog
November 5th, 2009 | Posted in General
Hermann Mejia, me, Mark Fredrickson and Sam Viviano For the past two days I’ve been having fun at the annual International Society of Caricature Artists‘s convention, held this year in Sandusky, Ohio at the Kalahari Waterpark Resort. Every year this convention is something special, but this year they had four guests of honor/speakers, all from MAD Magazine. They included MAD art director and longtime MAD artist Sam Viviano, MAD cover artist Mark Fredrickson, MAD illustrator Hermann Mejia and myself. I was greatly looking forward to not only seeing my good friend Sam and many other friends for the ISCA, but as I had never met… READ MORE
November 4th, 2009 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch(es) are coming live from the International Society of Caricature Artists‘s annual convention. As I mentioned before, I am one of four guest speakers from MAD Magazine at the event being held this week in Sandusky, OH, the others being Sam Viviano, Mark Fredrickson and Hermann Mejia. Often times the guest speakers catch “the bug” (and I’m not talking about H1N1) when at the convention and start drawing like the 220 plus other artists do all day and all night. So last night we found ourselves drawing each other in the main competition hall: At the table clockwise from left: Sam Viviano, Mark… READ MORE
November 3rd, 2009 | Posted in News
I’m speaking today at 1:00 pm at the International Society of Caricature Artists‘ annual convntion and competition, held this year in beautiful downtown Sandusky, Ohio. I’ll be followed by former airbrush legend and current digital painting master Mark Frederickson. Tomorrow’s speakers are MAD art director and long-time MAD artist Sam Viviano and w?¬?nderkind Hermann Mejia. Tomorrow evening there will be a panel of all of us answering questions as well. I’m greatly looking forward to this, in part because I have never had occasion to meet either Mark or Hermann. Funny we’ve been mainstays in MAD for over a decade each and yet never had… READ MORE
November 2nd, 2009 | Posted in General
I am still not over my jetlag from the USP trip and now I am off to Sandusky, Ohio for the ISCA convention where I am a guest speaker. The Lovely Anna is only tolerating this because she is going to go with me to Australia for the Stanleys next week. At some point I may need to do some work to pay for some of this stuff… Who am I kidding? I got up at 4:00 am to finish a job this morning before flying out and have two more jobs to work on with me. READ MORE
November 1st, 2009 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: As a live caricaturist, I’ve noticed that some days, things flow quite naturally.¬¨‚Ć I can observe what I see and properly draw it on the page with a little exaggeration here and there.¬¨‚Ć But on occasion, I have “one of those days”.¬¨‚Ƭ¨‚Ć These are the days that I find it extremely difficult to get the result I want – likeness, line quality, and so forth are a struggle to achieve, and simply “trying harder” doesn’t seem to get me too far.¬¨‚Ć You have been doing this a long time, and I wonder if you had any insight into how to deal with one of… READ MORE
October 31st, 2009 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Over at Mark Evanier‘s excellent blog, NEWS FROM ME, he posted a little historical fact about how MAD switched out the cover of issue #122 after Robert Kennedy‘s assassination: The original cover of #122 The revised cover The original cover showed a series of Mort Drucker caricatures of the those people considered the main candidates for president after Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. After the cover was completed Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and that led to MAD replacing him with Alfred in the upper right balloon. This is not the only time such a thing has happened. In 1991, MAD had… READ MORE
October 30th, 2009 | Posted in General
Late on the evening of Oct. 19th our band of ten landed at COB Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq. Formerly it was FOB Speicher (forward operating base) but because of it’s size was reassigned as a COB (contingency operating base). It was also formerly Al Sahra Airfield under Saddam. Tikrit, of course, is famous for being the hometown of Saddam Hussein. Getting off the plane it was the first of many surreal moments… hard to believe a bunch of middle aged cartoonists were standing on the sands of Tikrit, Iraq. Stephan Pastis and I turned to each other frequently during the next few days to say… READ MORE
October 29th, 2009 | Posted in General
Arriving at the airport in Kuwait City, I was prepared for some major culture shock. Traveling in Europe is one thing… usually you can figure out the meaning of things like signs based on the common nature of the Latin based languages, and they all use the same basic alphabetical charters which at least look familiar. Arabic, on the other hand, is totally indecipherable to one with no knowledge of the language. Every time I saw something written in Arabic I had the impulse to turn it upside down. The Kuwait Airport My fears were groundless. Almost every sign is Kuwait, especially road and direction… READ MORE
