Wielded a whirlwind pencil

CARTOONIST

12-8-1923 - 29-12-2008

BILL Green, one of Australia's longest-serving cartoonists, who became widely known by his "WEG" signature on his newspaper work and on football grand final posters, has died of heart failure at Maroonda Hospital, aged 85.

Green was the first Australian cartoonists to introduce the novelty "pocket cartoon" - a single column cartoon comment on topical/current events - daily in an Australian newspaper from 1949. British cartoonist Osbert Lancaster did the same in London and was eventually knighted.

Green had the rare ability to reel off the highest quality caricature in less than two minutes. So much so that in January 2006 police arrested a thief half an hour after he entered Green's Heathmont home, thanks to a remarkable likeness the cartoonist sketched for them in less than a minute.

During his 40-year career with the now defunct Herald newspaper - which ended in bitter fashion - he produced a wide range of editorial illustrations, cartoons and caricatures. Two features in particular, "WEG's Weekend" published across 30 centimetres on page two of the broadsheet, and his pocket cartoons, made his signature widely known.

Green joined the afternoon newspaper in 1946 after serving with an infantry battalion in New Guinea in World War II. He gleefully recounted how his first artistic earnings came from fake Japanese flags he painted as souvenirs for gullible US servicemen. He had his first cartoon published in the Army News.

His love of drawing would later result in deep sadness when his Herald & Weekly Times bosses forced him into retirement in 1986 after four decades of loyal service.

Green described the experience as "like a bad marriage ... it's like finding out that your wife's been unfaithful, and you wonder why you were such a dill to persevere". Green, in fact, saw a psychiatrist for 18months after he discovered that his work was suddenly unacceptable. Not only did the editor repeatedly refuse to publish it, "there was further indignity he would screw it up in front of me and throw it in the waste basket".

Green was born in Fitzroy but grew up in Essendon. He studied architecture at RMIT before going off to war. After the war and demobilisation, he married and took advantage of the ex-serviceman rehabilitation scheme he did a course at the National Art School in Melbourne under renowned painter William Dargie, rather than continue with architecture.

After some of the cartoons he submitted to the afternoon broadsheet were published, he was hired as a replacement for the editorial cartoonists who went on holiday. His mother had warned him that "you'll starve if you're a cartoonist", but the intended six-week stint turned into a 40-year career.

In 2001, Green was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to art as a cartoonist and illustrator, and to the community, particularly through the Good Friday appeal for the Royal Children's Hospital. Proceeds from WEG posters for the hospital raised more than $2million.

Premierships posters by WEG became highly prized collector items, with one Magpie fan reportedly paying $5000 for a 1958 Collingwood premiership poster. (Each year Green drew two posters, one for each team playing in the grand final they were pre-printed in readiness for sale, with the posters for the losing side destroyed.)

One of the thrills of Green's life was to have a racehorse named after him. He was on a Channel Seven show for children with Happy Hammond when an owner noticed how fast he was drawing and considered it a good omen - so he named his horse Weg.

Unfortunately for the owner, the horse displayed none of the artist's speed and never won a race. For his part, Green always hoped the the owner retired the horse to a good stud.

Green was highly regarded and acclaimed by his peers in the Australian Cartoonists Association. He was the first artist from the Victoria chapter to be "smocked" as part of a national custom that began in 1938. The artist's smock, complete with flowing black bow, is smothered with drawings, signatures and messages of congratulations before being presented by his or her peers.

Green received the accolade because for more than 60 years he influenced and helped generations of young artists, and along the way became a household name.

Then, in 2003, he was presented with the association's silver award for lifelong service to cartooning.

Joan, his wife of 63 years, survives him, as do his sons Barry and Jan and daughter Lynette, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Vane Lindesay, a former newspaper colleague of Bill Green, is patron of the Australian Cartoonists' Association.

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