Creating the Large Hedcut Portrait in the WSJ Portrait Style

Aside from producing the well-known WSJ hedcut style portraits, I am sometimes called on to create a large hedcut portrait; the same style portraits in a large format. This is a nice change of pace and is gratifying because I know the display of my art will be more prominent. Because of the detailed nature of my work, drawing in this larger format consumes considerably more time!This is representative of your typical Wall Street Journal hedcut portrait drawing, the subject, George Clooney.

Large Hedcut Portrait for a Paper Man

Speaking of the WSJ, when Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper several years ago, The New York Times called on me to do a RUSH job for the next day’s paper. They needed one of my portraits but at about 4 times the size of the usual. Here is my large hedcut portrait of Mr. Murdoch:

The Father of Evolution's Large Hedcut

Another time, I received a commission to produce a large hedcut portrait of Charles Darwin for a full-page newspaper ad, which I believe it ran in the Journal. The photo I had to work from was this:The finished art turned out well, I thought:

Large Portraits for Outstanding Employees

I wrote recently about the portraits I do for a Canadian company called LoyaltyOne. They call upon me to celebrate an employee by means of an honorary portrait. These are fairly large portrait drawings, always with a hand-drawn banner containing the the honoree’s name. Here is the reference image I had to work with:…And the finished art:

A Big Portrait to Capture a Big Personality

Lastly, a large portrait for a client in London that I did a few months ago. The client wanted to show the fun-loving side of this exuberant subject!above, the photo. Below, the finished, large hedcut style portrait. It’s fun trying to capture the emotional moment!