Collection: Tom Whalen

I hail from a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, USA called McAdoo. My grandmother owned a candy store in a nearby town when I was kid and I spent many many Sunday afternoons sitting on a weathered stepladder next to the spinner rack of comics in that store. I guess you could call that the origin of my drawing career. Inspired by the books that I read there, I spent every hour of spare time sitting at the drafting table that my father handed down to me. I drew every obscure character from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and Who’s Who in the DC Universe. I had no formal training until years later, when I attended Kutztown University, where my love of drawing was cultivated alongside a newfound enthusiasm for typography and design. Since then, I’ve always relished the opportunity to creatively merge word, design an image into a cohesive unit. If at all possible, I’d highly recommend studying as many disciplines as possible (fine art, design, illustration, sculpture) to give your creativity a chance to grow in different mediums.