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I first encountered this type of illustration while reading the Wall Street Journal during my days studying at Pratt Institute in New York. Back then I had no idea what it was called or how it was done.
From Wikipedia:
Hedcut is a style of drawing, primarily of people, pioneered and used by The Wall Street Journal. The drawings are traditionally 18 by 31 Picas (3″ by 5.167″), and use the stipple method of many small dots to create an image. They are designed to emulate the look of woodcuts from old-style newspapers, and engravings on certificates and currency. The phonetic spelling of “hed” may be based on newspapers’ use of the term “hed” for “headline.”
So yesterday nostalgia struck and prompted me to search for a Photoshop plugin that can perhaps achieve a similar effect. Alas, after five years of not really waiting, no one has come up with anything close. My googling led me to the website of Kevin Sprouls, the man who started it all. Check out his site and this site and this one or grab an O’Reilly book at your local Barnes & Noble to get a feel of what the Hedcut style looks like.
I began tinkering last night with pretty good, but not perfect, results. I was thinking that maybe some famous political figure should be my first test subject. The first person I thought about? Russian President Vladimir Putin.
1. I’m going to start with an image that I pulled off of Google ImagesSee Tutorials
