Kevin Sprouls
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Kevin Sprouls is the creator of the Wall Street Journal portrait style known as hedcut.
He began as a freelance illustrator for Dow Jones and Company—the parent company for The Wall Street Journal. In 1979 he introduced a style of portraiture that the Journal adopted because of its concise, engraving style. Kevin became the first full time artist at the Journal, eventually the Assistant Art Director and head of the illustration department. His Wall Street Journal illustrations were awarded a gold medal at The Society of Illustrators competition in 1986. His style of portraiture, later coined hedcut, is the definitive corporate icon and is created completely by hand, not computer.
Kevin, who once again is a freelance artist, still works for Dow Jones on occasion, along with a host of clients including but not limited to: Time Inc., Field and Stream Magazine (cover illustration(s) in 2005), Quirk Books (1001 Guilty Pleasures, The Amazing Magical Wonder Deck), Sports Illustrated (cover illustration), Despair Inc. (The Art of Demotivation), Infinity Autos (Chiat/Day), the Columbus Citizens Foundation exhibit (at the Grand Central Terminal in New York, Oct. 2005), Esquire Magazine and Trust Company of the West, to name a few.
Kevin Sprouls has been featured on CNN, in the American National Portrait Gallery and in the Smithsonian magazine.
His pen is housed in the Newseum in Washington.
[edit] External links
- Kevin Sprouls’s homepage
- How a Photo Becomes a Wall Street Journal Hedcut at DowJones.com (PDF)
- Ink Dot Art in the Smithsonian magazine
- Getting Inside Their Heds—a chapter from Picturing Business in America. Hedcuts in The Wall Street Journal, an article on the National Portrait Gallery website
