Saturday, March 13, 2021

Happy Birthday, Al Jaffee


Al Jaffee has made a lot of people happy with his "fold-in" illustrations for MAD Magazine. Let's wish him a happy 100th birthday today. He was born March 13, 1921. 

Here's how he creates his fold-ins: "Jaffee starts with the finished "answer" to the Fold-In, and then spreads it apart and places a piece of tracing paper over it in order to fill in the center "throw-away" aspect of the image, which is covered up when the page is folded over, using regular pencil at this stage. Jaffee will then trace the image onto another piece of illustration board using carbon paper. At this stage he uses red or green color pencils, which are distinct from the black pencil of the original drawing, in order to discern his progress. Once the image is on the illustration board, he will then finish it by painting it. Because the illustration board is too inflexible to fold, Jaffee does not see the finished Fold-In image until it is published." --Source: Wikipedia

 Mad: Fold This Book! A Ridiculous Collection of Fold-Ins

4 comments:

Drake Gomez said...

Wow--100 years old! What...him worry?

Susan Krzywicki said...

Those fold-ins were so cool. Thinking about how life is an illusion that we constantly play with. The man has a wonderful brain.

CerverGirl said...

Wow! Thank you for sharing, brought back memories.

doforanimals said...

Pretty amazing. Loved the art and humor of MAD while growing up. I wasn't allowed to touch the magazine until my big brother was through reading it, LOL. Only then I was able to do the fold-in.