The Stippler

Did you know that the Wall Street Journal actually employs artists to do the unique stipple portraits of subjects who appear in the paper? Metro New York interviews WSJ stipple specialist Noli Novak:

The stipple that we use at the Journal is not a regular pointillism. The dots are larger than regular pointillism and it looks kind of grainy. It’s meant to resemble fashion engravings. It’s not something you can learn in school. It was something that we had to learn at the Journal because the Journal really wants the style to stay the same. They don’t want big differences between different artists’ styles. It takes months [to learn] because it’s a very unique style.

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I got a letter from a guy once whom I noticed in the picture was cross-eyed. In the drawing sometimes, if you do a cross-eyed person, it looks like you made a mistake. This guy was really cross-eyed. He said, “All the operations I’ve had on my eyes, nothing could get rid of it but you did it perfectly!” I didn’t completely move his eye but I had to do something just to make it not look like a mistake and he was very grateful for that.