My Blue World

Well, I think I’m done with the My Blue World series. I just don’t feel like these later ones hit the mark as much as the earlier ones did. I think part of it has to do with a lack of time I have to really think about them, and another part has to do with a long list of rules I set up for myself based on those earlier concepts. Rules like: Never show an entire face so that the people portrayed can be fairly anonymous, try to capture the least amount of information possible in order to tell the story, try to capture the story at its most interesting moment, etc.

I’ll probably be printing the series in iPhoto book form accompanied by a CD of ELO covers (since my illustrations are like covers: my take on ELO songs). Love to take credit for the CD idea but that was Bill’s genius. If you'd like a copy, lemme know.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed most of them.

Sweet Talkin' Woman

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Mr. Blue Sky

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How's the rain look? Not sure how happy I am with it.

Turn To Stone

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Bock Bock

Uncovered these the other day. When my friend Laurie first announced she was going to open a Guthrie’s in Atlanta, I did similar versions of these for her. Check ‘em out. Incidentally, my lovely wife did the illustration for the 2nd poster. She is awesome.

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Don’t Bring Me Down

The latest in my E.L.O. series. I think I wanna do "Turn To Stone" next. Any ideas for that one?

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emoticohn

:—)

This is the emoticohn: The first Jewish emoticon (according to me). Notice the Heebie shnoz. And don’t worry, I’ve already put it on t-shirts here. (Most of them say “emoticohn” on the left sleeve.)

Here’s that Tom & Jerry piece

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Joseph Barbera 1911-2006

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Strange Magic

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With the exception of Xanadu, I’ve noticed that all of these have taken on a dark feel to them. Not that that’s a bad thing, I suppose.

Can’t Get It Out Of My Head

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I wasn’t too happy with the lack of a real concept for Xanadu, but I feel like this one's getting back on track. As usual, if you have any suggestions for visuals for other E.L.O. songs, I'm open to ’em.

On a related topic, I took all of the Better Than One illustrations and used iPhoto to print them in books. They look freakin’ cool all printed up and professionally bound. I geeked out and printed tiny books that can fit into my wallet. They were only six bucks a piece to print! Niiiice.

Greetings

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The 2nd in my E.L.O. series. Took me a while to do the six illustrations for each letter but I think I got the cheesy vintage postcard feel I was going for, albeit with a slightly updated twist. It skews a bit clip-arty at times, but I’m hoping that lends to the cheese factor. I thought about aging and distressing the image to make it look like an authentic postcard, but I decided to keep with my flat, graphic style.

Comments? Suggestions? Visual ideas for other E.L.O. songs?

Helen’s Wish List

Can’t think of anything to get Helen for the holidays or for her upcoming birthday January 22nd? Here, lemme help.
First off, you can always rely on her constantly-updated Amazon

Next, apparently, there’s still stuff from our wedding registry on nambé.com that she’d like.

And, lastly, she looooves the Jeff Soto.
More specifically, THIS PRINT



and THIS PRINT.



I’ll be sure to add more stuff as she continues to drop not-so subtle hints.

My Blue World

Recently, I was introduced to a band called L.E.O., an E.L.O.-inspired group made up of a buncha members of some of my favorite bands (Bleu, Jellyfish, etc.). Listening to them led me to a new appreciation for E.L.O. and that, in turn, led to the germ of an idea: A set of illustrations inspired by the titles of E.L.O. songs. Who knows where, if anywhere, it will lead.

The first one I took a crack at was Evil Woman. Love to know what you think of it.

As always, I’m open to suggestions for illustration visuals inspired by other E.L.O. songs. Being that I can’t really draw, I’m sorta restricted to my simple, graphic style, but I’ll do my best.

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Fun with Pottery Barn

When Helen and I saw stocking hanger thingies that spelled out PEACE, JOY and WISH, we couldn’t help ourselves. Hey, if Pottery Barn didn’t want people like us screwing with their stuff, they shouldn't leave it out.

Mwah ah ah!

Wish I dunnit

Here is my new favorite ad that I wish I’d done.

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And here’s the original photograph the ad is based on.

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Better Than One

So, as you might’ve guessed, I’ve really been into these Two Heads illustrations. I just finished two more for the holidays featuring the theme “Christmas meets Hanukkah” which you can see below. [Click on an image to enlarge it.]



Since my blog is not the best way to showcase these illustrations, my lovely wife programmed a website for me called Better Than One featuring all the illustrations I’ve done to date.

And, just in time for the gift-giving season, I took some of the more popular illustrations and turned them into mugs which I’m selling on, you guessed it, Store of David. [Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the mugs.]

What do you get when you squeeze a synagogue?

JEWWWSSS!



After a 20 year hiatus, I finally stepped foot into a temple for Friday night services. Helen wanted to check out the worship side of Judaism and, after a lot of sighing on my part, I gave in. We’re not big on organized worship, but it was an opportunity for her to find out what Judaism’s all about and possibly connect with the surprisingly-large Jewish community in Durham.

In the tradition of Lenny, the first Jew we encountered told us ALL about the temple, the history of Durham tribesfolk and every “famous” Jew ever to live in North Carolina. Then he called us “young people,” which sounded good to me.

The service: It went down as most Friday night services do: Some bits from Gates of Prayer, some standing, some sitting, some more standing, Hebrew, Hebrew, Hebrew, etc. They had the phonetic spellings so Helen could sorta follow along. Most of the tunes came back to me, but they had some new remixes I wasn’t familiar with. All in all, it felt like Temple Sinai circa 1980, but without my dad having to separate me and Steven because we were laughing every time we heard the word "Toosh b'chata." (Heh heh...Toosh)

Then they read the torah, which Sinai never did/does on a Friday night. What was cool about the reading was that the rabbi translated as he went along, then put things into context. It was more of a story that way and, I gotta say, it was pretty cool. I did not know Abraham had a second wife. Did'jew?

They also did a thing where they asked the congregation if there were any new folks there that night. Kind of a New Jew Review (Anyone get that reference? Anyone?). New Jews would stand up, introduce themselves and give a bit of background. I went first. I thought when I said my name was Keith Greenstein, half the congregation would shout back, “Oh, Lenny’s son!” But no luck. It was the only room I’ve ever been in where Jews didn’t know Lenny. Spooky.

The oneg (the bit in the social hall after the service: brownies, cheese, Coke products) was nice. A lot of people introduced themselves to us and were very friendly. When they asked what we did for a living, I got an unimpressed, “Oh…” Helen, on the other hand, was deliriously happy with LARGE number of “Ooooo!” reactions she got. I was in Bizarro World. I was like, “Did I mention my father is LENNY GREENSTEIN?!” Nothing. Who WERE these people?

ANYway, it was a lovely evening. Helen felt as anyone encountering temple for the first time would: A bit out of place. But, overall, she liked it. They could use a cantor that can sing IN key and maybe a bit more liveliness in the singing (name a temple that COULDN’T use that), but it was a good experience. We may even go back.

Good vs Evel

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My apologies for the horrible pun. Actually, the reason I paired them was because their costumes go together so well.

I've decided that when I reach 12 illustrations, this first series will be complete. Look for 11 and 12 this holiday season.

Echo?

My poor, sad blog. It hasn't been visited in days and days. Maybe the last 9 days, each one with a new illustration posted, just weren't worthy of comments. Maybe people would rather enter Bill's awesome photo caption contest. Maybe people actually have work to do (almost got through that last sentence with a straight face). Anyway, I don't know why I'm posting this because no one will visit my blog to read it. Sigh.

I'm so sad, I didn't even go back to correct all my apostrophes. (This is an apostrophe: ’. This is a foot mark: '.)