Mailbag
January 12th, 2020 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve got a question about what you see (visualize) when you are drawing a caricature. When I try to draw something (caricature or otherwise) I can’t really visualize what I’m drawing until it’s on paper. When you begin a caricature, do you know what it will look like or are you ever surprised with how a drawing turns out? A: It’s a little of both, especially when doing studio work. Yes, I have a decent idea of what I want the image to look like in my head, but it’s not like I see the finished product in its entirety. It’s a little like seeing… READ MORE
January 5th, 2020 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How do we form a daily drawing habit? A: Any skill or ability you wish to improve at requires two elements that are of primary importance: study and practice. There are no secrets or shortcuts, it’s really that simple. Unfortunately study and practice require one unavoidable thing from the practitioner… Time. It takes time to find and consume learning resources like websites, books, and classes (shameless plugs inserted), and of course to practice that skill/ability. It’s like that for playing a sport, a musical instrument, a game like chess, or an art like painting or drawing. Everyone is busy. Life makes a lot of… READ MORE
December 29th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I have career in medicine. However, I always had a great passion for drawing. Since I have spend most of adult life working and in school I had little time to allocate to drawing. I purchased your book last year and have been reading it. This leads to my question–could one LEARN to draw or is this a talent you either have or do not have? I don’t want to be a professional artist, I just want to be decent at drawing especially cartoons and caricatures. A: Ah, the age old question… is an artist born or bred? Do you need natural talent or… READ MORE
December 22nd, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve drawn my whole life. Pretty much everything I know is self taught. No one taught me how to “start to become an artist” step by step. I looked up stuff online or in books. I’m always learning to draw a variety of things, with a variety of different styles, and in a variety of different mediums. I know a lot but I’m not really a “master” at anything as an artist. I take on a lot of different things at once. Is that a bad approach to learning? Should I first study and “master” figure drawing, then portraits, then anatomy, then caricature, then… READ MORE
December 15th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Looks like it’s that time again… no questions to answer in the mailbag. I actually only have to post this maybe once or twice a year, and only because many of the questions I get are repeats of ones I have answered more than once in the past (I’ve had this feature running for over thirteen years, and this is the 615th “mailbag” post) or of the “please show me how to crosshatch” variety that are impossible to answer in a few paragraphs. It’s entirely possible that people have run out of questions. There are only so many questions people might have about freelancing, illustration, MAD,… READ MORE
December 8th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Will you please do one of your caricature workshops in my area/backyard? A: I’m in Orlando right now, on the last day of teaching another of my caricature workshop. I just posted a new workshop location/dates for August in Detroit, MI yesterday. Whenever I post a new workshop, I invariably get the following: “Can you do one in Miami/Dallas/Brazil/my backyard?” I get this one a lot… so often I repost the answer now and then. The answer is “maybe”, but there IS a way you can make it happen if you really want to. I choose where I am going to try and do a workshop… READ MORE
December 1st, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Seeing your Captain Rochester picture made me wonder what you think of the evolution of the depiction of the male heroic physique in comics since the 1960s, as a bodybuilder yourself. I haven’t bought comics for many years, and it was partly the advent of what I saw as the weirdly unpleasant overdeveloped character representations that made me stop. A: The “Captain Rochester” character (see above) is of course an exaggeration of a male comic book hero physique (although not by much by modern standards). I’m no expert but it seems to me the superhero physique of the day is a reflection of society’s… READ MORE
November 24th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I buy a lot of original MAD art, and a good bit of it comes with a red cellophane overlay (is it rubylith?) Was that an alternate way to do shading? Or did it replace the duo shade method. It seems to be hand cut to the areas it is shading, and seems tedious. Did the artist have to do it? A: This question was asked in a comment on a post a did a few months ago about the duo-shading process I duplicated the look of in the Tarantino retro-parodies MAD did. I thought it would make for an interesting mailbag topic. Be… READ MORE
