General
January 29th, 2021 | Posted in General
After writing my own parodies for my first two appearances in Cracked Magazine, in the early spring of 2000 I was assigned the art duties working on someone else’s script for the first time. The movie being spoofed was the first X-Men film, and the writer was Barry Dutter. Barry had already been doing work for Cracked before the AMI buyout, so he was one freelancer who did continue into the Dick Kulpa era. He had writing credits at Marvel (including their “What The?!?” humor comic), Bongo Comics (The Simpsons), Ren & Stimpy Comics, and other work. He wrote a lot of stuff for Cracked… READ MORE
January 28th, 2021 | Posted in General
Following my turning in the final of my “Godzilla” parody to Cracked in late 1999, publisher Dick Kulpa gave me carte blanche to do another of basically anything I wanted. The HBO series “The Sopranos” had been a huge hit the year before, and season two had just gotten started when I decided to do a spoof of it. I hadn’t seen much of the show so I tracked down a few VCR taped episodes from some friends, including fellow caricaturist Jim Batts from St. Louis. I “binged” them long before “binging” was a thing. Like the “Godzilla” parody, I needed to write this piece… READ MORE
January 26th, 2021 | Posted in General
Since I am sharing my work with MAD chronologically every Monday, I think it’s only fair I also go back and take a look at my short time with Cracked Magazine. I’ve been thinking about that lately since the publisher of Cracked during the time I was there, Dick Kulpa, recently passed away. Anyway here’s the first part of the story of how I started working with Cracked. The year was 1999, and I had started setting my sights on breaking into MAD. At the time I was president of the National Caricaturists Network (now the International Society of Caricature Artists), and we were planning… READ MORE
January 22nd, 2021 | Posted in General
One thing I’ve never done much of is animation work. I have done some art that was used in some animated shows and films, like the stuff I did for the MAD show on Cartoon Network and for some segments in a couple of smaller films and other projects, but that’s about it. Last month I posted a couple of caricature designs I did for a political 3D animated project, and some people wanted to see the full turnarounds rather than just the single designs. I don’t have all of those saved, but here’s a few of them with the complete 360 views (clicky to… READ MORE
January 19th, 2021 | Posted in General
My team the Green Bay Packers are back in the NFC Title Game this weekend against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers! Could not resist whipping this up today. It’s an update of an old drawing I did for some client or another ages ago. Hoping for a better result than last year’s NFC Title Game against the 49er’s. We will see. GO PACK GO! READ MORE
January 15th, 2021 | Posted in General
In the last 8 months or so I have been doing a surprising number of private and corporate commissions that call for original art as opposed to digital. While I can hem and haw my way through a painting like that reasonably well, it has been so long since I did a lot of traditional art jobs I felt like I needed a refresher course in working in watercolor. So, I looked up a former instructor from my art college days who I knew lived in my area, and asked if he was interested in spending a couple of hours working with me on my… READ MORE
January 14th, 2021 | Posted in General
I had a nice surprise is the mail yesterday. My plaque for winning the National Cartoonists Society Divisional award, aka the “Silver Reuben” for “Best in Magazine/Newspaper Illustration” for 2019 arrived on my doorstep, and was not stolen by porch pirates. Yes, this is 2021 and this was for 2019, but the mail is slow during a pandemic! Actually as there was no in-person NCS Reuben Award Weekend this year, the awards and speaking program were done virtually back in September as part of NCSFest, so it hasn’t been all that long since the awards were announced (BTW if you want to see any of… READ MORE
January 12th, 2021 | Posted in General
Back in the 90’s I owned several caricature operations at some tourist-centric shopping and entertainment venues around the country. I had operations at Underground Atlanta in Atlanta GA, Union Station in St. Louis, MO, and Mall of America here in Minnesota (the mall part, nit in what was then “Camp Snoopy” theme park). I was always trying to figure out ways to make the displays more dynamic and eye catching. One way I thought would be great was to add a video element to the display. This was 1993, well before anybody with a laptop, a smartphone camera, and basic editing software, could put together… READ MORE
