Tom's Mad Blog
February 14th, 2016 | Posted in Mailbag
A: You mentioned that you are still trying to improve your drawing skills. How do you to this? Let’s say you are not content with the noses you are drawing. Are you then doing some hours of exercises on noses? Or are you just paying more attention if you are drawing noses while working? Q: I am constantly seeking to get move forward as an artist, cartoonist, and storyteller. I do not have any specific “exercises” that I do to improve my skills, so I had to think on this. How DO I work on getting better? I came up with four important things: Mindset-… READ MORE
February 13th, 2016 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The owners of Android based smartphones and tablets will have ample opportunity to lower their collective IQs and loosen their stools with digital copies of MAD now available on their devices. Google stock is sure to take a hit on Monday. READ MORE
February 12th, 2016 | Posted in General
Yep. READ MORE
February 11th, 2016 | Posted in General
I received this the other day via email: Dear Tom, I started caricature wood carving about 6 months ago. Recently reading the blog of Don Mertz, a well known caricature woodcarver, he highly recommended your book. Not wanting to figure out how to free up yet another slot on my bookcases (as I’m still struggling with where to put Volume 3 of Walt Kelly’s Pogo) I decided to do a search for a digital copy of your book, knowing this would be futile. Much to my delight and surprise I found it on your web site. I know the risk involved in producing non-DRM ebooks,… READ MORE
February 10th, 2016 | Posted in Classic Rock Sketch Series
Here’s another in my “Classic Rock” series… guitar God Eddie Van Halen! As always, the original is available in the Studio Store. READ MORE
February 9th, 2016 | Posted in General
A few days ago a fellow caricaturist alerted me to a Facebook post that was using a caricature sketch of mine of Jay Leno as part of a political propaganda message (see image above, the “Stolen Image” added by me so no one is confused as to why this is on my blog). This angered me greatly. God knows I’ve done artwork for some conservative political groups, but I get PAID for that. I often just roll my eyes at this sort of thing, but this one I couldn’t just let slide. To top it all off, they intentionally cropped out the clear copyright I… READ MORE
February 8th, 2016 | Posted in MAD Magazine
1981 MAD Cover by Sam Viviano! I came across this January interview with longtime MAD artist and current MAD VP of Art and Design (over 16 years as art director) Sam Viviano over at PrintMag.com. It’s a look at the nuts and bolts (mostly nuts) of the design and production of everyone’s favorite satirical humor magazine, as well as Sam’s history with the magazine… well a very truncated version of it anyway. Here’s an excerpt: In 1980, Viviano received a call from MAD editor Al Feldstein, who was searching for a replacement for longtime cover artist Norman Mingo, who had passed away a few months… READ MORE
February 7th, 2016 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I noticed when you’re drawing (live) caricatures, you flick your hand/wrist out after drawing tighter lines. What does this do to the look of the artwork? A: I tried to find a video that might show what you are talking about. This one from about 10o years ago of me doing a demo of a Bruce Willis caricature has some of that: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3RGzdywZ3E[/youtube] If you watch the drawing part of this video, you will see that between lines I shake my hand back and forth (you’d see a lot more of it if this was a continuous video as opposed to a collection of… READ MORE
