at WSJ, Classic Art… episode 25

( To view the initial Post in this series, please click on https://www.sprouls.com/ink-rhythm-blog/classic-wall-street-journal-art )

We’ll start today with a hedcut (newspaper-talk for portrait) of the English author G.K.Chesterton…

WSJ hedcut

I wonder if he was always so cranky-looking? Chalk it up to Catholic Guilt — Chesterton is known, along other things, as the writer of the Father Brown Mysteries series.

The simple drawing above garnered me a prize at the Society of Illustrators. Office romance, anyone?

The dense image here is a two-column illustration that refers to the advent of the rise of the robocall — still a bane on society today! (the klinky-type phone in the picture was still well-known in the 80’s, when this was created.

Here is the avant-garde musician Skip LaPlant. I suppose the editors at the Journal were amused at the notion that someone could attain fame using the rudimental percussion instruments displayed here. This was printed at one-column width on page- one after The Wall Street Journal.

Returning to a recurring theme - Wildlife, here is an elegantly detailed drawing of a lizard:

Also a one-column image in the paper, this image is interesting for the subtle depth-of-field effect that is going on between the head of the creature and its back, on the left.

Until next time…

FYI, Kevin Sprouls is still pushing the pen. Contact him for any illustration needs… kevin@sprouls.com