WSJ Hedcuts of Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman

As a portrait artist, I am often perplexed as to why sometimes it's really easy to capture a particular individual's likeness and then - almost impossible to master another. I've created seven hedcuts of Tom Cruise for The Wall Street Journal over the years. I am not completely pleased with some of them...and totally humiliated by others (I sure won't show those here!) I do know that every single time I've had Cruise on my drawing board, at around the half-way point I fool myself into thinking that finally - this one's looking pretty good. And then I'll complete the effort and think... "who the hell is that!?" I believe my least-embarrassing effort is the portrait here - from Steven Spielberg's 2002 "Minority Report". I've definitely had more success rendering Morgan Freeman's likeness. I've had three opportunities to create portraits of him for the Journal and I've been pleased with each of them. Perhaps he just has a more interesting face. This effort is from a small independent film he made back in 2006 called "10 Items or Less." The two of them co-star in "Oblivion," directed by Joseph Kosinski - opening this weekend.