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.

Noli Novak is working at the Wall Street Journal, training new illustrators in the hedcut technique. Capturing the likeness of the subject is ultimately more important, which is best shown with celebrity portraits. Most of her portraits are done as spot illustration accompanying newspaper articles or as requested by her clients for various projects.

Penn and Teller

Juestlove

Alan Greenspan

Michael Douglas

Alicia Keys and Kenneth Cole

Janis Joplin

Cynthia McFadden and Arianna Huffington

Barack Obama

Pink Eyes

Top row: Steve Jobs, Kelly Ripa, Hamid Karzai
Bottom row: Sting, Rupert Murdoch, Hilary Clinton

Tommy Hilfiger and David Lynch

Cynthia Rowley and Salvatore Ferragamo

Christiane Amanpour and Lesley Stahl

John Leguizamo

Benicio del Toro

Top row: Susan Sarandon, Johan Santana, Petra Nemcova
Bottom row: Alec Baldwin, Russell Simmons, Mary J. Blige

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Cindy Crawford and Karl Lagerfeld

Top row: Jon Huntsman, Larry Page, Daryl Hannah
Bottom row: Conan O’Brien, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Maher

Grumpy Cat

Bear Grylls and John Waters

Mindy Kaling and Christopher Guest