I just go back from 13 days in Europe where I thought workshops in Amsterdam and Switzerland, enjoyed some between time in the former and sweated a lot. Here’s one of the warmup sketches the class and I did in Switzerland… UK politician Boris Johnson. READ MORE
Since my Sunday Mailbag yesterday dealt with doing political pieces, here a look at what was probably the most controversial politically-themed job I’ve done for MAD (and there have been a lot of them). I was working on the coloring of this job while on a plane from overseas back to the states, and The Lovely Anna leaned over to tell me I might want to turn off the layer with the sign lettering on it, just in case someone looked over and saw “JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US” fulling my Wacom MobleStudio Pro screen. I’m not sure what would have been worse… getting confronted… READ MORE
Q: I see you do little or no political cartoons or caricatures that depict political subjects or characters in funny or unpleasant themes. Do you avoid doing these or they are simply not in your interest to do it? What are the risks for doing and publishing such artworks? A: I guess you don’t read MAD. I definitely do not avoid it. I do plenty of political stuff, but I’m not an editorial cartoonist and not very interested in making it a focus of my work. Politically themed jobs are just jobs like any other jobs. The “risks” you mention are mainly just entering the… READ MORE
One day left in my final European workshop of 2019, here in beautiful Seengen, Switzerland! I’m working on some possible overseas workshop locations for 2020, and of course some in the U.S. The workshop in Amsterdam last weekend was great… I’ll post that class illustration as soon as I get it done (too many deadlines before leaving for Europe)! Above is the illustration for Switzerland. READ MORE
Well not really lost but not published in MAD either. While MAD did parodies of all three of “The Hobbit” films only two ended up in the magazine. The third was done as an original piece for a special “Loot Crate” edition of MAD. Written by Desmond Devlin, only Loot Crate subscribers (and collectors on eBay) got a copy of this 6 page spoof. It happened to feature one of the craziest two page spreads I ever did for MAD… the battle scene with the Five Armies: Here are the pencil sketches for this project: READ MORE
This is one of my favorite splash pages from a film parody in MAD, “The Dork Knight Reprises” written by Arnie Kogen from MAD #519, Feb 2013. I had fun with everything here… the composition, and caricatures, the sight gags… plus it’s Batman. READ MORE
Here’s a flashback from waaaaay back, one of my earliest movie parodies in MAD. This is the splash page from MAD‘s spoof of “The Royal Tennenbaums” from MAD #417, May 2002, written by Arnie Kogen. This one was from back in the day when MAD used to do parodies of films other than popcorn munching blockbusters. READ MORE
I’m still in Amsterdam having just taught a workshop last weekend and then traveling on to Switzerland for another this weekend, so this week is going to be a “MAD Flashback” week where I’ll post looks at some stuff I’ve done for the magazine and for other projects for the MAD guys and DC comics. For a few years MAD published these perfect-bound “bookazines” that revolved around different themes and contained reprint material. I did a few covers for these including this one for “MAD Spoof’s the 80’s”. Everything was done digitally on this except for the spot caricatures on the squares, which I did… READ MORE
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