He collaborated in design and illustration in all the major publications of Brazil from the 1900s until the late 1940s, including O Malho, O Tico Tico, Fon-Fon!, Careta, A Cigarra, Vida Moderna, Para Todos, Eu Sei Tudo, Revista da Semana, and O Cruzeiro.

His oeuvre is estimated to be more than 100,000 illustrations, with a varied range of fictionalized personages and Brazilian popular figures of the time.

From a quintessential Brazilian archetype comic strip, the whimsical little black girl named Lamparina, and other curious cariocas type, to middle class characters and famed politics and society people, nobody in the Brazilian conscious mind escaped J.Carlos elegant line of perception.

The illustrator declined, but sent Disney a drawing of a parrot that inspired the creation of José Carioca.

[3] In 1950, while discussing his friend's, João de Barro, known as Braguinha, upcoming record cover illustration, J. Carlos suffered a brain stroke and died two days later.