{"id":203,"date":"2019-07-13T16:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-13T16:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/?p=203"},"modified":"2019-07-30T02:07:13","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T02:07:13","slug":"mad-about-the-end-of-mad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/13\/mad-about-the-end-of-mad\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad About You!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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R.I.P. Alfred E. Neuman. You will be missed.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I felt a nostalgic twinge in my gut the other day when I learned that Mad Magazine will cease publishing forever. I mean, I knew it had to come eventually as we continue on in this digital age. But Mad Magazine was such a part of me growing up, I find myself mourning as though one of my childhood best friends has passed away. Ever since I can remember, I was always a comic book reader and collector. I loved superheroes, Batman in particular. Big Batman fan. I also loved cartoons!. Big fan of Hanna Barbara cartoons. But that\u2019s for another post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I got a little older, maybe nine or ten, I taught myself to draw comic book heroes just by copying the art in the books. Not with tracing paper, but just by observation. Of course, at first, I wasn\u2019t very good at it. My drawings were of misshapen figures way out of proportion but, eventually, I actually got pretty good at it. I learned to draw lots of Batman and Superman images in their heroic poses, mimicking the style of those comic book artists. I would spend hours drawing and I didn\u2019t even know that I was actually learning figure drawing, action, movement etc. I was just in a zone and loving the end result I put on paper. The real artists did the hard part, I was just copying their lines and style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I discovered Mad Magazine. It was a whole new world for me in learning how to draw. The illustrations in Mad were not so heroic, much closer to cartoons, which I loved, than comic book art. It was another source of inspiration and I dove right in. Don Martin, Mort Drucker, Paul Coker, Jack Davis,Sergio Aragons`, Al Jaffee and Dave Berg were my favorites. Just incredible artists and illustrators who taught me how to draw. I learned so much from these greats and really didn\u2019t know it. I didn\u2019t know that I was actually learning figure drawing, caricature, exaggeration and more. I was just drawing for the love of it. And I would draw late into the night and early morning hours. I\u2019m such a night owl anyway and late night hours drawing put me into a zone that was an incredible place to be. No noise, no distractions, just me, a pen or pencil, some paper and my latest issue of Mad Magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really wish I would have continued learning the craft as I got older. I did take art in high school but didn\u2019t go any further with it in my teen years. I stopped my late night drawing sessions by then because I discovered another creative diversion: music! Learning how to play bass guitar and singing at the same time, and wanting to be in a rock band became my all consuming passion. But again, a whole other subject for another blog post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

R.I.P Mad Magazine. You will be so missed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I felt a nostalgic twinge in my gut the other day when I learned that Mad Magazine will cease publishing forever. I mean, I knew it had to come eventually as we continue on in this digital age. But Mad Magazine was such a part of me growing up, I find myself mourning as though … Continue reading “Mad About You!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,20,19,21,18],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artists","tag-comic-books","tag-comics","tag-illustrators","tag-mad-magazine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pddwuS-3h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classclownstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}