Tom's Mad Blog
February 7th, 2008 | Posted in General
Back some time ago I blogged about an interesting project I had doing an image of Sherlock Holmes for One Voice Recordings and it’s awesome voice artist David Ian Davies to use as “album art” for a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s complete Holmes canon audiobooks on Audible.com. I subsequently wrote about how David’s son Dana, who produces resin pens and other items done by wonderfully talented sculptors and hand painted and distributes them for sale all over the world, wanted to produce a pen from the image. The other day I received the final product and it’s very well done indeed. It’s not… READ MORE
February 6th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I thought I’d try something different this week and do a sketch while scanning in several stages to show the progression. This week’s subject is guitar legend Eddie Van Halen, circa 2007. I start out very loose and geometric, aiming to establish the head shape and placement of the features. 80% of the caricature is figured out at this point, including the exaggerations. Eddie’s forehead is very prominent these days, and his square jaw and chin. His famous goofy grin and squinty eyes are still a big part of his look. I have zero concern about superficial likeness at this stage. Now I begin fleshing… READ MORE
February 5th, 2008 | Posted in General
Me by the legendary Al Hirschfeld! I meant to do this post back on January 20th, since that was the 5 year anniversary of the great Al Hirschfeld‘s death, but I guess all the Mai Tais I was consuming made it slip my mind. I was going to tell the story of my meeting Hirschfeld and how I got the above piece of priceless caricature art. I was elected president of the National Caricaturist Network in 1999, during their annual convention of that year. At the time, the NCN was growing rapidly and we were trying to put on a second event, a “Mini-Con”, at… READ MORE
February 4th, 2008 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Mad Magazine Uses Pulitzer Winners to Tweak Bush I’m assuming this article will be in MAD #487, out on the 19th of this month, but haven’t confirmed that yet with the staff. (UPDATE- Just got the info, yes, the article will be in MAD #487). In short, the article entitled “Why George W. Bush is in Favor of Global Warming” features various reasons illustrated by 10 different Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonists. MAD did something similar a few years ago when they did a spoof on superheroes with a number of goofy hero parody characters each illustrated by some of the top names in comic… READ MORE
February 4th, 2008 | Posted in General
Ugh. More of the same…. I’ve got several half done articles for blogging that I promise will get posted this week. Next week look for the first of my “Drawing Caricatures” articles. READ MORE
February 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you have any tips and tricks on drawing figures or composing a scene with multiple figures in it? I’ve tried practicing by drawing from life, but I feel like the “from life” experience I get is sometimes stilted by the fact that many people don’t want to be drawn while sitting on the train, etc (and I don’t want to be caught staring!). At the same time, I can really see the interaction when someone if right in front of me. Are there other methods that have helped you? A: Learning to draw the human figure is arguably the most important thing any… READ MORE
February 2nd, 2008 | Posted in News
Sometime back I blogged about ToonSeum, the new Pittsburg area cartoon museum that opened last fall. It looks the the museum has been busy with several great exhibits since it’s opening. A new one has just opened this month featuring the work of cartoon legend Morrie Turner of “Wee Pals” fame. The exhibit, Drawn in Black and White: Wee Pals and the Work of Morrie Turner will run until February 27th at the ToonSeum, located in at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, 1o Children’s Way, Pittsburgh, PA. If you are in the Pittsburgh area be sure to view the special feature on WQED’s “OnQ” airing… READ MORE
February 1st, 2008 | Posted in General
Yesterday in his terrific blog, fellow Minnesota illustrator Cedric Hohnstadt reposted an older article he had placed on his blog some time ago. The explanation for this “reprint” was that his blog’s traffic had increased dramatically recently, and most readers would not have seen this post… and presumably many others as well. That got me thinking… I often get e-mails or questions pertaining to topics I have already discussed or posted about, and it occurred to me that Cedric’s observation about increased traffic and newer visitors was probably the reason. One bad thing about posting something every day is that the MAD Blog Archives are… READ MORE
