On the Drawing Board
August 30th, 2006 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Deadlines conquered. Here are some images of the jobs I just finished and am working on now. The first two are from my latest MAD job entitled “When Video Games Become Religious”. Like the “Rejected Cars Characters” of a few issues ago, this was a little different than my usual work for MAD. “Damn, it’s that same stupid shape again!” “What would Jesus do?” The challenge here was that I needed to draw images both from the “video game” world and the “real” world, and make it obvious there is a difference between the two. In order to accomplish this, I needed to make the… READ MORE
August 23rd, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here’s the final colored art of the piece I inked for the inking tutorial: I hate using photshop tricks like I did rendering the grass on this one, but sometimes you just have to do it. I took only a few minutes compared to who-knows-how-long if I went in and painted blades of grass. Even using the Rubber Stamp tool it would have taken hours more to render that field of grass. It looks a little out of place in my opinion but the art director and client loved it, so what do I know????ᬨ‚Ć Also, here’s one of the panels from that Mel Gibson… READ MORE
August 19th, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
One of the two pieces I’ve got for MAD right now will be my first contribution to the “Fundalini Pages”. This is a new(er) feature in MAD that I really think is a nice addition to the magazine. It’s usually 3 pages right at the beginning, and contains gag strips, single panel jokes, list gags and other short content that together make a quick-hit kind of humor section. It’s great in that it caters somewhat to the short attention span of the age 10-16 section of the audience, and gets a lot of different artists and writers into the issue with contributions that are good… READ MORE
August 16th, 2006 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Just finished the Scholastic job tonight, and must proceed on both the MAD jobs and a poster job over the next few days. Here’s the final of the largest of the Scholastic spot illustrations (there were 8 in all): After I get the pencils done on the MAD job, I will be inking and coloring the poster job. I’ll have my wife Anna take pictures as I ink, and will do a detailed tutorial on inking with dip pens and brushes with them. Look for that in a few days… READ MORE
August 9th, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Things are piling up on the drawing board once again. Part of the problem with freelancing is that you never know when the next phone call will be your last for a while. As a result, you tend to take on more work than is good for you, for fear of a possible dry spell just around the corner. I’ve been very lucky in that I seem to get steady work, and it’s a very rare time when I have nothing on the drawing board at all. Here’s what’s on the board right now: Marlin Company workplace poster- another image illustrating a teamwork message… this… READ MORE
July 27th, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As promised, here is a scan of the inked version of the section of the splash page I had previously posted in pencil form: When comparing the two, you can see where I added to??ᬨ‚Ćand changed the drawing while inking. That all goes back to what I said before about the necessity of drawing while inking, and not just mechanically tracing the pencils. I changed his nose somewhat, added texture and more??ᬨ‚Ćdisarray to his hair, fleshed out some of the backgrounds and other??ᬨ‚Ćdetails and used both crosshatching and a little bit of a wash to add some values. I am coloring the piece so a… READ MORE
July 25th, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As promised, here is a quick peek??ᬨ‚Ćof part of??ᬨ‚Ćthe pencil rough for the MAD “Hell’s Kitchen” parody. This is a “reality” show that starts with 12 contestants all trying to be the last chef standing??ᬨ‚Ćto win their own resturant in Las Vegas. This is a caricature of the main antagonist, head chef Gordon Ramsey. He is a very interesting guy, very magnetic and highly volitile. He makes the show pretty entertaining. He also has a face that a caricaturist would salivate over… a heavy brow, craggy features and a nose like a potato glued to his face. This one is much better than my first… READ MORE
July 24th, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
So far I have managed to enter something in this blog almost every day since it’s inception, although an argument can be made as to if I actually had anything to say all those days… but I digress. This little recurring feature, entitled “On the Drawing Board” will give visitors a look at some of the projects I’ve got in progress, complete with some images of the roughs or various other stages. Right now I have three jobs in the works: The Ralph Nader vs. GM images for the Museum of Tort Law– I just finished the color comps for this job. Not much to… READ MORE
