This Actually Works

I made this discovery when I had a studio near a row of trash cans. Flies were constantly entering through the mail slot, causing serious damage to my attention span. I devised this method as a way to 86 them out of my space, as I regarded them to be "sentient beings." (They are truly formidable enemies, too.) Nickelodeon contracted this piece, and it later reappeared in their "best of" Ten Year Anniversary issue. In case you don't have a spare bike horn, you can use a plastic cup with an index card. Make sure you don't have any unframed watercolors on your walls, though.

My Old Friend Paul

Visual Vacations was a postcard company maintained by Paul McGeHee (1950-1989). The entire line celebrated the old graphic convention of conveying greetings from various states with gigantic letters that housed pictorial elements apropos of the word they spelled. The states these cards referenced were from various mental and psychic conditions, not the original 48 associated with the souvenir genre. With his constant companion Woofy, he made several cross-country trips in his VW bus ("The Roving Doghouse") It was always a pleasure when he swung by my abode. He commissioned me and a few other artists to submit designs complimenting his own titles, which comprised most of the VV line. I was working on "Greetings From Limbo" when he died prematurely from too much exposure to the sun earlier in his carefree youth. I was there with him when he took his last breath.

For The Sake Of Argument

This pen and ink illustration was done in the early ‘90s. It flowed off the pen on a lucky session at the drawing board--as if it came straight from the Astral Plane. The colorization below was done last week in several strenuous spurts at the computer. Granted, I am new to Photoshop, and an experienced hand could have done all my moves more quickly; but I believe that the scintillating effects, for all the effort they entailed, don’t enhance the original concept a great deal. It’s nice to have brilliant, translucent colors at one’s fingertips. But the “Zen” of pen and ink is down and dirty watercolor, done in colors far more subdued. Intuition, which is the driving motive of such playful and enjoyable work, seemed to be taking a back seat to computer technology. This new specimen is more illustration than cartoon, so the impact suffers. To paraphrase the old saying, “The soul of wit is brevity, i.e., simplicity of means. ”
  Even my houseplants are telling me that the old must make way for the new. This brilliant palette has the look of modern graphics, just as the aesthetic I’m comfortable with has a diminishing audience.  Luckily I have a friend who is going to teach me about “layers.” Moral: If you’re arguing with yourself, you can’t lose.

Our Creditor's Signage

A Brief History of the Barber Pole

Watercolor & Ink, 12" x 18", Originally Published in Signs of the Times, ©Justin Green

Peeling The Onion

  From pre-adolescence I aspired to get one of my cartoons into the New Yorker magazine. My mother and I pasted scores of covers onto a hinged room divider. There was something about the direct and playful quality of the drawing and painting styles that set them apart from the dominant realism that comprised most of the post-war magazine trade. While I had not yet learned to look down on Norman Rockwell, I sensed that he would never do a New Yorker cover, nor would they request one from him. Perhaps she was trying to encourage me to look elsewhere than Mad  magazine for artistic inspiration; though it was the hey-dey—I had just biked through a blizzard to get issue #25.
  After some half-hearted & assed attempts to get published at the highly esteemed venue, I finally had a spate of cartoon drawings appear in the early ‘90s. After the initial elation, I quickly came back down to earth. Perhaps an illusory barrier had finally been broken, but I was no happier than before. I had merely peeled a shard from the onion, and there were scores to go. Now rejection was even more painful than before. 

Out of Season

Ink and Watercolor, 4" x 12", 2006, from Signs Of The Times ©Justin Green

 These fabulous pelts were forfeited by the original owners when they suddenly became out-of-season.