Mailbag
July 7th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What’s next for you if MAD is really done publishing new stuff? A: I’ve had a lot of people contact me the last few days and ask me this question or some variation of it. I’ll let this serve as a catch all answer. First off, things won’t change much for me until at the earliest this fall. I just finished my assignment(s) for MAD #9 late last month. That issue comes out in August, and I have already been assigned at least one parody for #10, possibly along with another piece as well. That work will be due in late August/early September. After… READ MORE
June 30th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I see you do little or no political cartoons or caricatures that depict political subjects or characters in funny or unpleasant themes. Do you avoid doing these or they are simply not in your interest to do it? What are the risks for doing and publishing such artworks? A: I guess you don’t read MAD. I definitely do not avoid it. I do plenty of political stuff, but I’m not an editorial cartoonist and not very interested in making it a focus of my work. Politically themed jobs are just jobs like any other jobs. The “risks” you mention are mainly just entering the… READ MORE
June 23rd, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You’ve mentioned that artists/caricaturists needed to use social media to increase their presence, “particularly Instagram.” I am wondering, why particularly Instagram? Do you have suggestions as to how to build up that presence and ‘stand out’? A: Instagram has become the platform that seems most effective for visual artists to build an audience and find tangible benefits past just getting “likes”, which last I checked doesn’t pay any bills. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Instagram is basically 100% visual so it makes a lot more sense for visual artists and their content. I know several working artists who have developed their careers around promotion on… READ MORE
June 9th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve seen you mention a few times – including in your book – that in the studio you start a caricature with the head shape, but live you start with the features. I also recall reading (I think) that with live caricature, even though you don’t draw it first, you still visualize the head shape before you start drawing. The obvious question is … why not just draw the head shape first? A: That’s true. I consider head shape, and the exaggeration of the head shape, to be the most powerful tool in a caricaturists toolbox. I ALWAYS start a caricature by examining the… READ MORE
June 2nd, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I love your signature… it’s perfect for a cartoonist. Is it just your natural signature or did you engineer it? A: Thanks! No cartoonist I know did not design their signature in some way. It’s an extension of their art, really. I can’t remember exactly when I ‘engineered’ my signature, but it was very early on in my career. Certainly before I started doing professional illustration work, when I was signing about 3,000 live caricatures every summer at the theme parks. It’s evolved a little bit over the years, but the elements I intentionally incorporated into it remain: The big swooping “R” and the… READ MORE
May 26th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve been drawing caricatures at events for 34 years. Although I have seen improvement just from so much repetition and paying attention to certain things, I am sick and tired of my work. It’s not bad work, per say, but I feel I have plateaued. My work fills the requirements of what I do pretty well and nothing more. I dream of reinventing myself in terms of style. Sometimes I can push my work in the direction I want to go, which is more cartoonesque, and abstractly simple, but I never truly break out of my rut. I envy artists who look at a… READ MORE
May 12th, 2019 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What was the origin of the bold words in the dialogues of movies and TV shows in MAD? A: You mean when certain words in the word balloons in a MAD movie or TV parody are done in bold text like this?: That’s a great question. In fact it’s such a hard question I don’t know the answer. So I asked the one guy I thought might know the answer, MAD‘s art director Emeritus Sam Viviano. Turns out he doesn’t know either, but he did have a lot of illuminating information on that particular MAD tradition: Okay, here’s my take on the question about bolding in… READ MORE
May 5th, 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 11 years, and this is the 587th “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,… READ MORE
