Tom's Mad Blog
August 31st, 2018 | Posted in General
The comics community lost a true legend and pioneer with the passing of Marie Severin yesterday at age 89. Marie was a pioneer for women creators in comics. She began her career in the 50’s as a colorist for EC comics, where her brother John worked as an artist. In fact, Marie colored the original issues of MAD during it’s Harvey Kurtzman comic book incarnation, as well as many of EC’s famous horror and adventure comics. She would of course go on to become an important part of Marvel Comics, working as head colorist through the 60’s but also penciling and inking various titles during… READ MORE
August 30th, 2018 | Posted in General
I took a 24 hour breather yesterday to fly out to THE Ohio State University and see the “Artistically MAD” exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. I met my pal and fellow Usual Idiot Ed Steckley there, and go the grand tour from the museum curator Jenny Robb. It’s a great show I highly recommend if you can make it to Columbus. Here’s some pics of some of the highlights: READ MORE
August 28th, 2018 | Posted in General
Here’s a look at a handful of different commissions I did last weekend at the Wizard World Comic Con in Chicago: READ MORE
August 27th, 2018 | Posted in General
I did these cover illustrations for a couple of MAD’s “Bookazines” back in 2016. A “Bookazine” is the modern day version of the MAD Super Specials i.e. reprints collections. They are square-bound publications with heavier, glossy paper kind of half way between a softcover book and a premium magazine format, and usually follow a theme of some kind. MAD has been printing them every quarter for a few years now. You can see a list and all the covers of the Bookazine run over at Doug Gilford‘s fabulous MAD Coversite. READ MORE
August 26th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Piggybacking off the previous Q and A about how you begin a live caricature — outlining the face first, or starting with the eyes, nose and mouth, then working around that — what angle do you prefer…a straight-on head shot, or three-quarter? And should one be preferred over the other, relative to highlighting features the best or one being more “dramatic” than the other? A: It depends on the face, but in most cases a 3/4 angle is most descriptive of the subject. It gives you a much better dense of depth with the face, and you see elements of the front and side… READ MORE
August 24th, 2018 | Posted in General
I’m live at Chicago Comic Con! Well… mostly live. Stop by if you are at the show!! READ MORE
August 23rd, 2018 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Here are some spot illustrations I did in 2011 for SI Kids. The article was about different types of coaches and I needed to create a cartoon character version of each “type” showing some of their pro and con attributes. We loosely based some of them on real coaches, but not in their facial features. Things like clothing, accessories and demeanor might remind you of certain real coaches in pro or college sports. None of them are even remotely caricatures of real people, though. Here are the final results . . . I think the details of the type is pretty self-explanatory between the illustration… READ MORE
August 22nd, 2018 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I’m still really swamped trying to play catch up after my European workshop tour, so not time for a real SotW this week. As everybody seemed to enjoy last week’s post of one of the woram up drawings we sis in my workshop in Switzerland, I thought I’d post one of the ones we did from the London Workshop. Again, these are warm ups we do before we start class on the second day, and I look up subjects that might have some relevancy to the location of the workshop. One of the ones we did in London was this one of Keira Knightely. I… READ MORE
