Richmond Illustration Inc.

Tom's Mad Blog

Sketch o’the Week

July 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week

This week’s sketch is a quick study of the late, great Spencer Tracy from a photo reference circa 1942 1967. READ MORE

The Dreaded Deadline Demon

July 1st, 2008 | Posted in General

Ugh. Currently paying the price for my time away from the studio… and I even spent a good part of my time away WORKING!! READ MORE

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.… READ MORE

Sunday Mailbag

June 29th, 2008 | Posted in General

Q: I read your recent posts about Will Elder and Bill Gaines, and how you never got to meet them. What MAD legends have you met, and who do you still want to meet? A: I want to meet everybody of course, be they “legends” or just your run of the mill members of the “Usual Gang of Idiots”. Meeting the “legends” is unfortunately becoming a little more urgent a goal. Sadly a few of the early artists and writers from MAD have passed away. That’s not surprising… MAD‘s 500th issue will be on newsstands in February of next year, which also marks MAD‘s 57th… READ MORE

Getting Fricking MAD in NYC

June 28th, 2008 | Posted in General

Just a short post today as we are travellng back home after our short but fun trip to NYC. Yesterday we spent in Manhattan, visiting the MAD offices, the Frick Museum, walking about the city and having a nice dinner. Stopping by the MAD offices is almost a must of course. When you work and communicate all the time with people but never see them there is a certain disjointed feeling, so whenever I come to NYC I always pop my head into the office to say hello. The lobby at the MAD Offices Two usual idiots Prints of some of the famous works of… READ MORE

Bunny Bash 2008

June 27th, 2008 | Posted in General

The Lovely Anna and I are currently in The Big Apple visiting our good friends Ed and Heather Steckley and in general just hanging out and relaxing… at least I will be as soon as I recover from the three all nighters I pulled to finish the “Super Capers” movie job. I spent Wednesday afternoon and night working in Ed’s studio on the final images for the final scene. Deadlines conquered…. AGAIN. Now its time to party! Despite my being a little bleary eyed we managed to spend yesterday afternoon traveling to Long Island to attend the annual NCS “Bunny Bash”, which is always a… READ MORE

Happy Birthday MAD Blog!

June 26th, 2008 | Posted in General

Hard to believe it’s been two years already since the first post on The MAD Blog. Thanks to leap year and a (very) few multiple post days, this is post #791. Just when trying to come up with something new to write about or when writing a post begins to seem like a chore, I get another e-mail from someone telling me how much they love the blog and how much they get out of it, and they thank me for doing it. As I’ve said before, it’s a kind of therapy for me to put down the drawing pen and write for a little… READ MORE

Sketch o’the Week

June 25th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week

Still trying to nail this deadline so this week’s sketch will have to be a “blast from the past” from an old sketchbook. This was a quick study of director Steven Spielberg that I eventually redrew and painted up as a theme park sample circa 2002 (see park sample below). I was making fun of his cashing in on the anniversary of E.T. READ MORE