Hedcut

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Hedcut is a style of drawing, primarily of people, pioneered and used by The Wall Street Journal. The drawings are traditionally 18 by 31 Picas (3" by 5.167"), and use the stipple method of many small dots to create an image. They are designed to emulate the look of woodcuts from old-style newspapers, and engravings on certificates and currency. The phonetic spelling of "hed" may be based on newspapers' use of the term "hed" for "headline."

The Wall Street Journal first began using hedcuts in 1979 when freelance artist Kevin Sprouls approached the paper with some ink dot illustrations he'd created. The front page editor felt that the line drawings' century-old engraved look not only mimicked the paper's conservative stance, but also gave it a sense of stability. Additionally, they are generally more legible than photographs of the same size would be. Sprouls was subsequently hired as a staff illustrator and remained there until 1987. Today, there are six hedcut artists on staff.

Each drawing takes between three to five hours to produce. Women are often more difficult to depict than men, due to their more complicated haircuts, which get cropped for simplicity and to allow them to fit into the same sized frame without reducing the scale of the portrait.

In 2002, the Smithsonian Institute acquired 66 original hedcut drawings and have put them on permanent display in the National Portrait Gallery.

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