Tom's Mad Blog
March 1st, 2019 | Posted in General
I’m in Atlanta, GA doing a workshop this weekend! Class illustration above. For those who are on the fence about doing one of these workshops, The one coming up in Minnesota in May could be a rare opportunity for some serious one-on-one time. Right now I have only three students signed up but as my expenses are so much less doing one here in my hometown, I’m going to do the workshop regardless of the number of students. So, there may be as few as three for the entire workshop class. Even if that number doubles there will still be only half the students I… READ MORE
March 1st, 2019 | Posted in General
Founding MAD publisher William M. (Bill) Gaines was born on this day in 1922. He would have been 97 today. I never got to meet Bill. He passed away June of 1992, 8 years before my first piece appeared in MAD. The list of current MAD contributors who worked with MAD during the Gaines era is getting small. Al Jaffee, Dick DeBartolo, Sergio and Des Devlin are still regulars. Rick Tulka, Paul Coker, and Sam Viviano have occasionally appeared in the last few years. There may be a few others I’m missing, but many like myself never even met him. READ MORE
February 28th, 2019 | Posted in General
Back in 2015 I did black and white, pencil caricatures of all 44 (then) presidents of the United States as centerpieces for the Washington DC Reuben Awards banquet tables. I made a poster out of them (no longer available I’m afraid). Since then I’ve sold the rights to use these images a few times for various clients, including a kids book that needed me to color them. I don’t recall ever posting the color versions, so here’s a gallery with them all, including Trump who was not part of the poster (Click on one to start the gallery feature): READ MORE
February 27th, 2019 | Posted in News
The NCSFest website just went live yesterday with details on the full lineup of special guests, panels and speakers, artists Alley and the Marketplace on Main St., The Family Zone on 5th and PCH, the Windows Trail, the giant comic strip drawing jam, multiple exhibits at the Arts Gallery, children’s book readings by the creators and other programming at the Huntington Beach Library, “The Great Zombie Walk” and more! All FREE to the public! You can also buy day and weekend passes for the premium events and programming taking place about 3/4 of a mile down the Pacific Coast Highway at the Hyatt Regency Resort.… READ MORE
February 26th, 2019 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Whoops, this was supposed to post next Monday! Oh well. Here’s my favorite panel from “Merry Poopins Visits the White House” from MAD #6. In case you missed them, here’s the splash and a panel from page 3. I liked this panel just because it’s the better of the caricatures I did of Emily Blunt and Lin Manuel Miranda. The filmmakers went out of their way to try and make Emily Blunt look a lot less like Emily Blunt in this film, so capturing her was difficult. Ordinarily she has these sleeply-lidded eyes with a pronounced dark bulge under them, and a kind of protruding… READ MORE
February 25th, 2019 | Posted in General
I shared a peek at the “Merry Poopins goes to the White House” splash page from MAD #6 last week, but that feature I did with writer Ian Boothby was six page long. So for the next few weeks I’m going to post a favorite panel from each page. This was my fav from page 3, mostly because of the background gag. I drew in a “David” statue with Trump‘s head, with a cell phone of course, and with even more enormous hands that the real David has. I think that is a gag but I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump hadn’t commissioned something like… READ MORE
February 24th, 2019 | Posted in General
If you are into that sort of thing… I stopped watching when they gave “Best Picture” to “Annie Hall” instead of “Star Wars” in 1978. Granted, I was 11 years old and couldn’t figure out how some movie with a nervous weirdo and a lady who dressed in men’s clothes could be better than one with light sabers and Darth Vader. In fact I still can’t. READ MORE
February 24th, 2019 | Posted in General
Q: I noticed that in beauty or glamour magazines that eyes are tilted up to highlight lashes while the eyes you draw are often tilted down. Is this to emphasize a sort of “sad sack/loveable loser” nature to get readers to sympathize or identify with faces that have distorted features? A: No, and I don’t think you are correct when you say the eyes I draw are “often tilted down”. I draw the eyes of any subject tilted as the eyes of the subject are tilted. Some are up, some are down, some are even. It’s all about the specific subject. The angle the eyes… READ MORE
