Kevin Sprouls developed the “hedcut” style while working at the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980s. In this blog post he describes how, over a period of about six months, he refined the look in four phases. He discovered that he was able to achieve the even tonal effect by aligning the dot field into a grid matrix.
Lately, Kevin has created a series of portraits for Gallup, Inc., the polling organization. In this recent blog post he shows us the source material he receives and final portraits in the hedcut style. As he says, some of the photos aren’t always the best composition or quality, but he clearly makes it work.
When we asked Kevin who he has not yet drawn and would like to, in finance, he said Elon Musk and Christine Lagarde; in politics, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. And “Putin would be interesting-very dramatic features.”
Of course Kevin doesn’t just work for the the WSJ. He has produced a lot of portraits for the Boston Globe, the New Yorker, and Worth magazine. And he doesn’t just work for newspapers and publishers. Be sure to log onto his website to see the depth of his experience on all kinds of projects.
