Tom's Mad Blog
July 7th, 2007 | Posted in General
My youngest daughter The Effervescent Gabrielle pointed out to me last night that today’s date is 07-07-07, which is a ‘lucky day’. Since she’s already a lucky person, she thought I should take her up to the convenience store at 7:00 am today and have her buy a lottery ticket. She’s thirteen, this is summer and none of my kids have seen the awake side of about 10:00 am in a month. Somehow I think she’d have reconsidered how lucky today is if I really had woken her up at 7:00. Personally I’m not feeling real lucky. I’m paying the price for being a business… READ MORE
July 6th, 2007 | Posted in General
I did the above image as part of a new collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes stories on audiobook, performed by the incomparable David Ian Davies. The new collection will feature David’s unabridged readings of the entire Conan Doyle “canon” of 56 short stories and 4 novels. I’m a big fan of David’s work and am delighted to both participate with a little artwork and for playing a small part in the collection’s origins. As I have said many times here, I listen to a lot of audiobooks when I am working in the studio. As I have also said before, I need… READ MORE
July 5th, 2007 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Busier than usual right now. I have a few jobs already “In the Can” as they say in the business, and several more on the board, including two more for MAD, one for Scholastic, the Audible job and an image for the NCS Foundation. Whew. Most I cannot share until publication, but this client doesn’t mind my sharing the process… another of those poster jobs: Initial Pencil Sketch Finished Inks Final Art- Click for a closer look READ MORE
July 4th, 2007 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Happy 4th of July! A quick one of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. I struggled trying to draw him for the parody of “Brokeback Mountain”. It was a case where you see something that seems obvious but when you try and draw it, that something eludes you. I thought between the long, narrow face, the hairy eyebrows and the long, girl eyelashes that he’d be easy to draw, but I was not satisfied with many of the caricatures I did of him in the piece. READ MORE
July 3rd, 2007 | Posted in General
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July 2nd, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Since nearly every blog on the planet is heaping either praise or disdain on the newly released iPhone, I imagine most people are sick of hearing about it either way. As such, this will be my last post about the device until there is a significant update or a new version. Having had a few days of real world use with the phone, I have a list of the very good, the not too bad and the ugly and some final thoughts to those on the fence about getting one. The usual stuff you read about I’m just going to gloss over (except the stuff… READ MORE
July 1st, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I wondered if when you draw your figures for MAD, do you use some kind of construction lines such as stick figures then flesh them out with cylinders, cubes etc and then finally draw the finished figure? I’m having trouble drawing figures and they keep coming out either looking very rigid or completely out of proportion. A: The human figure is a tough thing to master. I struggle with it all the time, doing a lot more bad figure drawings than good ones. Personally I feel the best way to develop your figure drawing skills is to do a lot of quick, gestural sketches… READ MORE
June 30th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
After all my attempts to convince myself I did not want to buy into the hype and spend time and energy trying to get an iPhone on the day of it’s release, I owned an 8 GB iPhone by 6:20 pm yesterday. Sigh…. I am such a tech toy geek. In my defense, I was actually at the Mall of America at 3 pm yesterday to deliver supplies to my caricature/tattoo booth in the Park at MOA and to meet with a new artist that starts today. Just out of curiosity I went by the Apple store, which had a queue of at least 150… READ MORE
