Tom's Mad Blog
March 13th, 2008 | Posted in News
Some time back I posted a “Sketch o’the Week” that was to be a header for an ongoing column by me in the new publication Stay Tooned!, produced by John Read. In said post I promised to let people know when the magazine was out and how to obtain a copy. Well… the publication’s first issue, after a few brief delays, is arriving in subscriber’s mailboxes now. Stay Tooned! is “a quarterly publication devoted to the art and business of cartooning”. It “features profiles of professional cartoonists, plus articles and information of interest to working cartoonists, aspiring cartoonists, and fans of the art of cartooning!”-… READ MORE
March 12th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Talk about a rough sketch! I am unbelievably swamped right now with no time for personal sketching, so this is a “blast from the past”. This was about a 5 minute rough for a possible sample of Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn from Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace. You have to love that guy’s nose. I ran across it as I was scouring for sample drawing paper. I saved it as, simple as it was, I liked the expression and overall balance. I never did finish it. There will be a bonus “Sketch o’the week” this week as this one was cheating. READ MORE
March 11th, 2008 | Posted in Tutorials
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
March 10th, 2008 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Some time ago I wrote about the long anticipated tablet Mac finally having become a reality thanks to Axiotron. They have created a modification package that turns an Apple MacBook into a tablet based computer… it’s like having a Cintiq monitor combined with a laptop in one contained unit. Here’s a video I ran across recently demoing this new unit with Axiotron’s leader and some artists doing work on it: It’s great they have a comic book artist doing the demo, and a nice portrait of the reporter… too bad they didn’t say his last name. The show apparently is a local one from Hawaii.… READ MORE
March 9th, 2008 | Posted in Freelancing
Q: When is an illustration completed ?? As a freelance illustrator and cartoonist for almost 25 years, I still have the problem not knowing “when to stop”. I sometimes OVERWORK my illustrations which means I start to loose the more spontaneous feel. A: I think a lot of illustrators have this problem. It’s easy to get very involved with what you are doing and overwork something. By “overwork” I mean to keep rendering or working on a piece, adding more and more to it, until you compromise the effectiveness of the illustration. Often that means making the piece too “busy”, where the eye can’t figure… READ MORE
March 8th, 2008 | Posted in News
Within the pile of studio mail waiting for me upon my return was the official ballot for the National Cartoonists Society‘s Reuben award for “Cartoonist of the Year“. This award is the ultimate recognition for any cartoonist. Here’s what the NCS website has to say about the significance and history of the award: THE OUTSTANDING CARTOONIST OF THE YEAR is chosen by a secret ballot of the members of the National Cartoonists Society. The REUBEN AWARD is the highest honor that the profession bestows. As with all the NCS awards, the winner need not be a member of the Society. The award was previously called… READ MORE
March 7th, 2008 | Posted in News
Well, I’m back from the St. Louis NCN MiniCon. It was a great time even though I spent a good part of it frantically working on the last few pages of a MAD parody. That ended up being alright as I set up shop in the main competition room and everybody got a chance to see me work and ask me questions or just chat. My presentation on Monday went pretty well, although I really need to take out a lot of art from the PowerPoint show… it took two hours to go through it all. The inking workshop also went well… frankly it was… READ MORE
March 6th, 2008 | Posted in News
Unless you’ve been to one of these events, it’s really impossible to impart the sheer creative energy and inspiration that you find there. These pictures do not tell the story, but it’s the best I can do. Imagine a large ballroom full of artists drawing and painting in dozens of different styles and mediums. The walls about the ballroom have taped off sections with numbers above them, and each artist has his or her designated space. Gradually these spaces begin to fill up with caricatures… spanning the spectrum from a typical live, quick draw style to an elaborately rendered illustration. By the end of the… READ MORE
