Tom's Mad Blog
November 25th, 2021 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
I hope all who celebrate today are getting a chance to do so with their family, which is really what this holiday is all about. We’ll have a full household today, and that’s what I am thankful for. For a few years I did an annual “Thanksgiving” illustration for Sports Illustrated Kids which was a kind of roast of some of the notable stories and people of the year in sports. These are the images. Enjoy! READ MORE
November 24th, 2021 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s SotW subject is a young Daryl Hannah from her role in “Splash”! This subject was suggested to me by MAD superfan Adam Cooke. Thanks Adam! What’s that you say? You’d like to suggest a subject for a future Sketch o’the Week?!? Well, all you need to do is subscribe to my free weekly newsletter “The Ink Stained Wretch” (see below). Subscribers can email me with their suggestions, and then I draw them! Even better, subscribers see these sketches weeks before they end up getting posted here. This one is old news to subscribers of the ‘Wretch. To be fair, non-subscribers can also suggest… READ MORE
November 22nd, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Attention, class! Stop with the spitballs and paper airplanes, ya momsers! It’s Monday and time for another history lesson on the worst of MAD Magazine with a look at “35 Scholarly Reasons Why School Sucks!”, written by Jacob Lambert and drawn by me and the terrific Peter Bagge! I thought it was a cool concept with this feature to split the art duties between myself and Peter. He had just started having art in MAD about a year earlier, but was already very well known for his comic book Hate and other work. I did not see any of Peter’s art on this until I… READ MORE
November 21st, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You’ve drawn so many caricatures of famous celebrities. However, has there ever been a celebrity that you were unable to draw because it was too difficult? A: No such thing. You can caricature anybody. How far you can push the exaggerations and how good the recognizability is is all about your observations and execution of the caricature. Some faces may be more elusive to you than others, but all are solvable. Sometimes I’ll find a caricature just rolls off the end of my pencil without much effort, and others I’ll do several sketches and try several different approaches before I am satisfied. It’s hard… READ MORE
November 17th, 2021 | Posted in Classic Rock Sketch Series
Another Wednesday, another classic rock caricature. This time it’s guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan! As usual, the original is available in the Studio Store! READ MORE
November 15th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday already?!? Time for another installment of the game show that has everyone reaching for their remote controls, our chronological crawl through my work at MAD Magazine! This episode we have a look at the work I did for MAD #463, March 2006, which features a first for me with the magazine… the first issue in which I had two separate pieces featured. That’s twice the garbage for the same outrageous price! The first piece I did was a parody of the TV Show “Everybody Hates Chris”, written by the great Arnie Kogen. Whenever MAD does a “narrated” show like this there are always… READ MORE
November 14th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How has the experience of doing parodies for your book CLAPTRAP without the art department and editors from MAD’s involvement been like? A: Those schmucks? It’s been like a giant weight lifted off our shoulders! Like running through fields of flowers on a sunny summer day with the birds chirping and a song in our hearts! We hate it. All kidding aside there are pros and cons to not working with the MAD editorial/art department on these parodies. The pros are that we can do whatever we want, and are free to maybe take some risks or try different things that would likely not have flown with the… READ MORE
November 10th, 2021 | Posted in Classic Rock Sketch Series
This week’s sketch goes back to my “classic rockers” well with a caricature of Aerosmith axeman Joe Perry! As always, the original is available in my Studio Store. If you are just seeing this sketch now, you are behind the times! If you were a subscriber to my weekly newsletter “The Ink Stained Wretch” you’d have seen this sketch exclusively weeks ago! Plus subscribers get to suggest future subjects, like this one. Subscribe today for some fun in your inbox every Wednesday including other exclusive content and sneak peeks. READ MORE
