Classic WSJ Art, part 7

( To view the initial Post in this series, please click on https://cyan-sunfish-e2wr.squarespace.com/config/pages/620a981b1f3c5f26f4888ee8 )

This time, images from WSJ Section 1 - in other words, all 1-column and ½-Column illustrations. We start with this cute little rendition copied from Audubon for a story about Audubon:

This pretty bird printed at 1.25 inches across, or half-column. Next, a hedcut portrait of Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister…

WSJ Hedcut

As I recall, he was assassinated on the street in Stockholm. This portrait was, I believe, created for the story announcing his death. Note the background in this drawing. It is unusual for a hedcut appearing in The Wall Street Journal—a little experiment on my part. As I said, the editors largely gave me a free hand at the paper.

This full-column drawing refers to the money being made in the sneaker business. One fashion craze in the Eighties was the donning of athletic shoes to go to the office. It was enough of a phenomenon to merit a story.

Here, another full-column illustration, of the Olympian, Curt White. If you look closely, you’ll see I was using my T-Square and Adjustable Triangle, along with custom template, to create the wavy screen texture for my background here. Subtle variations in tone were made by filling in the spaces with tiny marks… kind of mind-blowing for a 2.25” wide drawing. Of course, the original illustration was usually made at larger scale — normally the art was reduced by around 35% via production camera. Note the broken frame here (weights). It was done for dramatic effect.

Here we have that Sensation of the decade, the dubiously dubbed Thompson Twins. They were noteworthy enough to score an article in The Journal. The publicity-photo made for a nice drawing. horizontal line background was hand-drawn.

I hope I have entertained you so far, Dear Reader. There will be more!