ILLUSTRATOR: NOLI NOVAK
I am a staff hedcut illustrator at The Wall Street Journal with over 26 years of experience. I have created tens of thousands of original illustrations for the paper and wide variety of clients ranging from all publishing, corporate brochures and advertising to product and website illustration and social media avatars.
“Part of my job at the Wall Street Journal is training new illustrators in the hedcut technique. It has been developed at the paper and kept alive by only a handful of us who had a privilege of learning the tricks of the trade. Mastering the hedcut technique is just one aspect of this illustration style. Capturing the likeness of the subject is ultimately more important, which is best shown with celebrity portraits.
Most of my portraits are done as spot illustration accompanying newspaper articles or as requested by my clients for various projects. I usually don’t pick my subjects and I’m given clear rights or permission for use of reference photographs I base my portraits on.”
Hedcut is a term referring to a style of drawing, associated with The Wall Street Journal. They use the stipple method of many small dots and the hatching method of small lines to create an image, and 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.”
