Joint Ventures

all images by Kevin SproulsThese portrait drawings, known in the parlance of the Wall Street Journal as hedcuts, were produced while I was heading up the in-house illustration team at the paper during the 1980's. Normally, we generated single portraits; however, there were those instances when we needed to depict more than one person within our space on the page. For this application, we were granted a full column, rather than the usual half-column window.Jim Wright and Tip O'Neill are shown here. Can you identify the rest??Next, name the astronauts (bonus points!)...from a human interest piece. It was always a challenge to "put together" these multiple portraits. We had to jam folks as closely together as was feasible, squeezing them into the two-and-a-half inch column width. My approach was usually to blend them together with a tonal fade. Can you find my signature?These guys are described merely as "detectives". Check out the fade technique.... a business couple with great hair.Eighties icon the Thompson Twins. More great Hair! My kids loved this band when they were tots.Hope you've enjoyed this brief tour through my portrait collection--- more to come...