Sunday Mailbag: Drawing Alfred?

Q: You have been drawing Alfred E Neuman for decades. His frontal face is 100% fixed more or less. Every time you need to make a new drawing, how do you draw his face? Do you draw it base on memory, use a reference or just copy/paste his face from past drawings?

A: When I first started with MAD I was told not to try and put my own spin on Alfred by exaggerating him, or to draw him in a three-quarter or profile view. Alfred was to be drawn at either the straight on angle or the “back of the head” angle. I was basically told if I need/want to draw Alfred, to just copy the proportions and look of the Norman Mingo original:

Some long-time artists for the magazine were allowed to have their own “version” of Alfred, but even they still stuck to the same basic “look” to the character and really just drew him within their particular style. I liked throwing Alfred into pieces I did as a cameo, just for fun. I didn’t start doing any covers for the magazine until late in my run with them, so if I drew Alfred officially for MAD it was just as a background gag.

When I draw Alfred, I almost always have the Mingo reference there to look at while I do it. He’s got a lot of weird proportions (Alfred, not Mingo), and it’s really easy to get off model with him. I draw a LOT of Alfreds when I do a signing of some kind. Those I draw very fast and just from memory, but they usually turn out a little wonky.

When doing something with Alfred for print, I have a penciled Alfred sketch I will cut and paste into the scan of the pencil and then adjust the drawing as needed:

That way I get the proportions exactly right without having to spend time doing it. I do “tweak” the ears a little, making them slightly bigger. That’s about the extent of the liberties I take with Alfred’s look.

Thanks to F H Lee for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about  cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!