Post 12, Classic WSJ Art

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

Again we visit my collection from the estimable eight years I spent as Lead Illustrator at The Wall Street Journal. Let’s view some early, you might say ‘prototype’, hedcuts I created there. These are scans from original art pieces in my keeping. They are far smaller than the formula we ended up using, making drawings at about 280% of the printed size:

WSJ hedcut

Unfortunately, I have no identification on these drawings. They did run in the paper as early hedcut forms, I presume on page one. These are some of the first attempts at The Journal’s portraiture.

WSJ hedcut

The figure above was drawn at a remarkably small size, maybe 130% larger than print size. In the early days, I was generous with the drawings’ vertical dimension. Aside from portraiture, another page one feature was the A-Head. This was usually a story about various common-interest topics, not centered on Business:

In this case, all about San Francisco’s Cable Cars. I had fun drawing the windows of this illustration. Full-Column-wide illustration on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

Intriguingly, I only executed one caricature in all my time at The Journal:

WSJ arts and leisure

Above, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Treasury, David Stockman. After being let go, he apparently wrote a ‘tell-all’ memoir about his time in the post. Fun piece.

Lastly, an illustration that was printed in Section Two…

Robotics

Even back in the eighties, people were concerned with the rise of Robotics. Here is my take the prospect of workers being replaced by machines. I recall this being a 4-6 column-wide illustration, in print.

That’s it for this installment… watch out for part 13!