The Lovely Anna and I are on our way to London for a week of sightseeing and relaxation. We are travelling with her parents, staying in thier timeshare in the heart of the city. I’ve never been other than trapped in Heathrow wating for a connecting flight, and have always wanted to visit England. I’ll have some posts from the other side of the pond next week. READ MORE
This is a picture of one of my first theme park caricatures in progress, taken at Great America in Gurnee, IL in the summer of 1985. People sometimes ask what got me started doing what I do. As far back as I can remember I wanted to be an artist. Comic books and Batman got me started loving art and storytelling, but I never set out nor really wanted to be a comic book artist. The truth is I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with art… I just wanted to be a “commercial artist” and make a living drawing and illustrating. Caricature was… READ MORE
Busy, busy, busy trying to get some stuff wrapped up before a big trip next week… the Demon is updated a little after current events. It’s the wrong arm, but you get the idea. READ MORE
The International Society of Caricaturist Artists does a daily sketch challenge on thier private forum where they pick a celebrity who’s birthday is that day, and a bunch of artists do a caricature of him or her. Lots of fun and some great sketches. I wish I had time to participate more, but alas that’s impossible. Yesterday as I was searching for a subject for the “Sketch o’the Week” I checked into the ISCA forum and found April 7th’s birthday target was the great film director Francis Ford Coppola, so I thought for once I’d participate via my weekly sketch. So here is my stab… READ MORE
Here’s a job I did a month or two back that is now on the stands so I can show some of the process and the end result. I used my new “colored line” technique, which is really growing on me, and also seems to be a hit with clients. The job: Cover illustration with a “survivor” theme showing how library budgets are getting squeezed and cut, but the libraries are “surviving”. They wanted a mixture of calm definace and some anxiety on behalf of the librarians, with sharks (aka budget cutters) eating away at their resources. Here are three initail rough sketches. They really… READ MORE
Although they’d like to scout the Far East like many other teams do looking for phenoms playing in Asia, the Minnesota Twins are too cheap to send their talent scouts any farther east than Peoria, Illinois… (from MAD #416) Ah…. Baseball. The Great American Pastime. The 2009 season starts today and, as always, hope springs eternal for the Hometown Nine… at least for a little while. Pro sports for the most part really turn me off. I like and follow the NFL mostly because being born and raised in Wisconsin I am hardwired as a Green Bay Packer fan, but the prancing, posturing players make… READ MORE
Q: When you do the splash page for say the “30 Rock” satire you did, how do you figure out how the background fits in reference to the characters? is there some simple geometry that you use? I always seem to have too big of a space, or everything looks like its getting crammed in. I am not really used to drawing characters in an environment, do you have any advise? Also when you do a big ensemble do you ever cheat and draw characters separately and add them or do you keep them the same from the rough stage? A: Here’s the “30 Rock”… READ MORE
It was recently announced by the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA) convention organizers that, for the first time ever, non-ISCA members are able to attend the main speaker presentations and panels for only $99.00 (cheap!). So come to beautiful… uh…. downtown Sandusky Ohio this November to listen to a bunch of MAD artists make fools of themselves. Speaking of MAD artists making fools of themselves… back when we was just a young and impressionable lad of 15, long before he became a world famous caricaturist, illustrator and MAD artist/art director, a beardless (!) Sam Viviano paid a visit to the DC Comics offices to… READ MORE
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