Eddie Marsan hedcut portrait

 I have drawn this stipple portrait in WSJ hedcut style to the end of 2021 and just forgot about this. The portrait took a long time, just because I was busy with my jobs and family care, and did small fragments by snatches.

Eddie Marsan is one of my favorite actors, he is able to play a wide spector of characters and still keep his unique vibe . I always conceived him as a soft, gentle person and I remember how I was surprised when I first saw how brutal he may be in 'The disappearance of Alice Creed'.

Rabbi family stipple (hedcut) portraits.

 

Rabbi family stipple portraits.

One of my latest drawings is hedcut (stipple woodcut) portrait of respectable family members.

Stipple portrait of Asma Hanif.

Stipple portrait of Asma Hanif, director and founder of the Muslim women’s shelter in the US (Muslimat Al Nisaa, INC) @mnisaashelter

Engraved portrait of rabbi.

Here is rabbi stipple portrait I did last year.

Rabbi Tzemach Cunin stipple portrait.

Rabbi Tzemach Cunin  (March 27, 1976 – July 5, 2019)

Recently I was afforded the honour of drawing the stipple portrait of Rabbi Tzemach Cunin.

Man in cowboy hat stipple drawing

Here is one of my latest hedcut drawings, guy in a cowboy hat and a check shirt.

Stipple portrait of admiral Harry DeWolf.

Recently I was commissioned to draw stipple portrait of admiral Harry DeWolf, canadian naval officer. It was planned to be printed on fabric banner about 80 cm large.

Woodcut stipple portraits for labels

Last year I did series of stipple portraits for t-shirt brand, I'm happy to see the result. They just placed hedcut sewers portraits on labels. I think it's a really great idea:

Photo by That's Los Angeles

Musician hedcut portrait

Click image to enlarge

Recently I was commissioned to draw stipple portrait of musician. Original photo was really great, professional, black and white with balanced contrast.
Usually I have to do some work to prepare the photo, sometimes it's a really solid task, and not only contrast tunning, it's just like a plastic surgery when you repair defects of the camera or objective distortions. But this time the photo was ready and I got so much pleasure drawing hedcut on it.
Here I decided mostly go with dots, maximally avoiding lines and crosshatching.

The biggest size hedcuts ever.

I was invited to create 8 stipple portraits of foreign writers, from Platon to Sartr, for the State library for foreign literature in Moscow.

Here are few photos from some of the events where my hedcuts are integrated into print materials, from small booklets to large press-walls and banners.

Guys from graphic design team did fantastic job and developed the system of special symbols for the graphic style (identity). I'm happy that they decided to contact me and invite to this project.

Group hedcut portrait

My recent drawing of group hedcut portrait with line engraving and stipple, slightly geometrical background.

Cara Delevingne hedcut portrait

Click the image to reduce the size.

This is a hedcut portrait of very beautiful charming cheerful model and actress Cara Delevingne. I have chosen unusually serious photo for the stipple drawing just because I love the color harmony there. As usual I tried to combine bold engraving with stipple pen and ink look.
P.S. Waiting for the Valerian movie impatiently.

Hedcut for your business.

I created this stipple portrait for one company about a year ago. Few more portraits I have drawn for this firm later.

Corporate clients choose 'WSJ' hedcuts to represent their staff on web and information catalogues for different reasons.
One and main reason is that engraving technique looks traditional, stable, old-fachioned in a good way and at the same time brings the feeling of timeless.

Another reason is technical: woodcut images still look crisp and clear even in a very small size whether it is printed or web page.

Hedcut portrait of Vanessa Anne Hudgens.

I'm a fan of Vanessa Anne Hudgens since The Frozen Ground (2011) where she created unforgettable character of young prostitute. I saved some photos of her in 2011 and only now found few hours to do the hedcut. She is brunette, so contrasted bold graphic works the best way here. The main detail of her image for me is  her mouth and hairs, so I accented it on the stipple portrait.

John Cusack with his kind intelligent face is very good as serial killer here.

New Year Lady Di stipple portrait

Here what I have done during short breaks between work and baby nursing, hedcut of Diana Princess of Wales.

Corporate stipple portraits

Here are some of corporate hedcuts done last period.

New Ray Liotta hedcut. Old one which I created few years ago is not so bad, but new portrait I think is much better.

Some words about hedcut technique.

This is one of my recently done hedcut for one web project. The number of stipple portraits drawn for this client is already over than 30 and I was very happy to work with them.

When you draw for the same client for years the most difficult thing is to keep the style which you have been using all that time for his portraits. Dot size and detailization level should still be almost the same. You draw portraits for another client with differents requirements and it may cause the changes in draw technique. What you have to do here is to keep an eye on previous hedcuts from this series while drawing the next one.

Finally you learn to switch easily but this is the dead end track. What you really need

Hedcut portrait of Rowan Atkinson

Here I tried new pen sizes, as I tend to bolder hedcuts last time. Two days since receiving mail package with Pigma Microns. I was thinking what face to test, finally I stopped on Rowan Atkinson as Walter Goodfellow from 'Keeping mum' (2005). First of all I needed vivid and contrasted features. For another thing I knew that in process of subduing new pens I may be have to redraw the hedcut, making corrections etc, so I didn't go wrong and chose face that wouldn't annoy me.

Finally I liked the result with bolder pens, they are press-sencitive and I could vary the bolndess of the stipple without changing the size. Though I'm not sure I will use these concrete sizes for the hairs, I need something more delicate I suppose,

Stipple portraits of Shaun Evans and Roger Allam

Portrait is clickable

I had some free time and drew new hedcut. If you ask me what I call 'true detective' I wouldn't tell you about stylish criminal drama with haggard Matthew Mcconaughey. What I think first is british TV series about young inspector Morse and Fred Thursday with amazing actors Shaun Evans and Roger Allam respectively. Here they are, 'Endeavour' stars stippled by me on group hedcut portrait.

Some time ago I decided to continue my exercises with crosshatching. Usually I use only dots/stipples on hedcut, even on suits drawing, and very few lines where it needs, for example on hedcut contours or curles forming. On this artwork I did crosshatching on coats and it was interesting to play with lights and shadows on folds. I think I will continue with this technique, in some cases it's much more effective than stipples.

Here is a larger fragment.

I didn't spend much time on background, I'm sure it should be subtle and non distractive here.