Happy Birthday to two real MAD men! Today is the birthday of both Al Jaffee and Sam Viviano. The seemingly immortal Al turns 101, while Sam (or, as Al calls him, “that young whippersnapper”) is a mere 69. The picture above is from a MAD event at the Savannah College of Art and Design circa 2011, and of course the gentleman between them is the great Jack Davis. Happy birthday, guys!! READ MORE
Recently I’ve gotten a few inquiries as to what happened to my blog, which used to be updated daily and is now only a few times a week. Back in October I announced I was switching my focus from a daily blog to a weekly newsletter. That newsletter is called “The Ink Stained Wretch” and is free to subscribe to. It features an exclusive first look at my “Sketch o’the Week” (I post that same sketch on my blog a week or so later), articles on freelancing, illustration, cartooning, caricature, news from me, etc. etc. It’s delivered directly to your inbox and you can opt… READ MORE
I don’t want my weekly sketches to become a “this famous person just died” exercise, but people that had some importance to me keep croaking. Just a few weeks ago we lost actor Howard Hesseman, who was most famous for his role as veteran radio DJ “Dr. Johnny Fever” in the classic sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati”. WKRP was one of my favorite TV comedies back in the day. It only lasted four seasons, but what a four seasons it was. Brilliant writing and some of the best characters and casting in TV history. Hesseman was one of the best parts of the show. I had to… READ MORE
Here’s to a happy and healthy 2022! I’m hoping this is the last year I have to draw a mask on Baby New Year. READ MORE
2021 was definitely dominated by working on Desmond Devlin and my CLAPTRAP book. I started turning down jobs to try and keep on track with it, although some jobs and especially a couple of bigger jobs had to be done. Easily the most high profile thing I did this year was the art for a CNN Docu-series called “History of the Sitcom”. This art was seen all over the place back in July, so that was fun to see. I also spent about six weeks in April/May doing a big job for a corporate annual meeting that involved a 16 page comic book and several dozen individual illustrations of… READ MORE
Here’s a last “Mock MAD Cover” commission from 2021. This one was from my virtual NYCC “Artist’s Alley” back in October. I usually don’t post the ones with personal caricatures but this one was fun and David, who is playing the Cliff Claven role here, gave me permission to share it. I’ll do at least one virtual artist’s alley table in 2022. That’s the only time I do these sorts of comic-con style commissions online. READ MORE
C2E2 2021 is in the books. It is still a bit surreal to be at an actual comic con again, and this one was still a lot less busy than the pre-pandemic version. It was still a lot of fun and thanks to all the folks that stopped by to say hello. Basically all the commissions I did this year were caricatures of individuals, so I didn’t bother to take any pictures of anything. I purposefully did not take any online orders nor take any commissions at the show I’d have to do later, because I need to spend all my available studio time working… READ MORE
This weekend I’ll be at C2E2 in Chicago for a for realz, live and in person Artists Alley appearance. Here are a handful of the “live caricature style” commissions I did for NYCC that took place in October. The “live style” drawings are done using the black and white pencil/blending stomp technique I do when I draw live caricatures, except of course I work from photos. This first one is a rare straight commission not involving caricatures, which are always fun. The rest are caricatures of celebrities or “Alfred as…” drawings. As I mentioned last week, I will not be doing a virtual version of… READ MORE
Sign up for Tom's FREE newsletter:
