Tom's Mad Blog
May 29th, 2016 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Which is the hardest feature on a face to draw? I’m finding the mouth to always mess things up despite following some of your advice in that realm (i.e. draw the lower line of the upper lip first, etc). I would probably say whichever feature one is trying to caricature, probably has the most impact on whether one’s drawing “works” and that could potentially be the hardest but for me, things seem to fall apart more when I get to the mouth. Any ideas or exercises you would recommend? A: The hardest feature to draw is whatever one you happen to be struggling with… READ MORE
May 26th, 2016 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Well, not really an illustration. This is a theme park sample from 1992 of Dana Carvey as “The Church Lady” from his serial SNL skit. This original had been missing for years and was found this spring behind another sample in an old frame at my Minnesota park operation. Gotta love the lumpy body. When I drew this sample I was 26 years old, had been doing “Married…with Children” for NOW Comics for about 2 years, had been doing live caricatures for about 7 years and had just started doing freelance illustration for a few clients. READ MORE
May 25th, 2016 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
They can’t all be serious. Here’s Leslie Nielsen as the Count from the 1995 Mel Brook’s film “Dracula: Dead and Loving it”! As always, the original is available in the Studio Store. READ MORE
May 24th, 2016 | Posted in News
Caricature of Mell I did in honor of his “roasting” at the 2004 NCS Reuben Awards Weekend in Kansas City. The world lost a true cartooning legend today with the passing of Mell Lazarus. Mell has been ailing for some time now so we all knew this was coming, but it’s still hard. The word “legend” gets tossed around a lot these days, but in Mell’s case that title is well bestowed. Of course he is best known as the creator of the long running daily comic strips Momma and Miss Peach, but that was just a part of what made Mell such a giant… READ MORE
May 24th, 2016 | Posted in General
I had to skip my appearance at Wizard World Minneapolis thanks to a last second job with an impossible deadline (that I still managed to meet), so I missed the fireworks there when artist Aldrin “Buzz” Aw confronted “fan art” artist Tim Lundmark (who goes by the name “The Random Artist”) who was selling prints that were obvious rip-off versions of other artist’s work. Nothing new there, you see that kind of thing so often at these shows. The difference here was that Buzz really went off in a profanity-laden way on Lundmark, and Lundmark ended up packing up and leaving. That was on his… READ MORE
May 23rd, 2016 | Posted in Monday MADness
Back in MAD #503 (May 2010) I did the art on a Desmond Devlin authored parody of the TV Show “The Big Bang Theory”… finished splash page above. As you can see, the splash was somewhat atypical of your usual MAD parody opening. Des had the article narrated by Albert Einstein, and the opening spread called for the traditional introductory caricatures of the cast to look like they’d been drawn on a blackboard by Einstein. I was not a fan of that idea because I knew that there was no way I’d be able to do make the caricatures look good by drawing them in… READ MORE
May 22nd, 2016 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Your caricature book is the go to for me and my drawings.. or at least my “attempts”. My question is that if I LOOK at a sketch of yours such as in your book, I can mimic the style and drawing, but drawing on my own without a reference ends up looking nothing like the drawings in your book at all.. any suggestions? I do practice drawing eyes, noses, mouths.. but it doesn’t all come together. A: Like I said in my book, no one can teach someone how to “see”… that is where the innate ability or talent comes into play. Someone can… READ MORE
May 20th, 2016 | Posted in Freelancing
Kinda busy right now so here’s a look at a recent Marlin Co. workplace poster illustration, one that should be running this month for their subscribers. The concept was to show a few big, football player type athletes in a camp setting eating not your typical snack/camp foods but healthy stuff. I wanted to show the coaches with trays of hot dogs and chips, but that idea got nixed. Not sure the concept is imparted well without the counter-argument. Pencil sketches below. READ MORE
