My Live Drawing Cousins: Courtroom Artists

We are different yet similar

Today was the second day of the E. Jean Carroll vs Donald Trump Civil Rape Trial. Unlike yestereday, I was allowed into the actual room where the trial was held, and drew from a bench in the gallery. I got there early enough to get a spot. I will just share a few of my drawings today (I did so many), and will post all tomorrow with commentary. I need the morning to scan all the sketches properly and write my impressions thoughtfully. I feel this is an important trial. Posting just a few now allows me to focus today on one part of the experience that was interesting for me.

Within a few minutes of finding my spot, five court artists arrived and found seats just across the aisle from me. Two of them I learned were mother and daughter, working seperately. I watched them throughout, glancing over at what my artist cousins were doing and how they were doing it. I did not bring any color tools, so it was fascinating to watch them create in pastel, using tons of colors. They worked on large boards, the pastel paper cliped to the boards. Their hands got very messy, so they had rags to help clean up any overly pastelly digits.

This artist had black tape or some kind of covering on her left fingers. Jane is the artist whose drawing from the Trump Indictment made it on the cover ot The New Yorker

They all had binoculars!

This court artist was inspecting all her pastels. She is the mother of the artist above. I’m sorry I didn’t get all their names.

It was funny being in the room with other “live drawers.” Our work is very different and our approach to the subject at hand is also different. They focus on one or two faces and spend over an hour (or more?) on one scene, crafting the colors and likeness of the person they are drawing. This is not a criticism, rather an observation: they are noisy! The scritching of the charcoal on the paper could be heard intermittently.

My approach is to capture a variety of people, from the guards to the workers, the lawyers, stenographers, judge, jury and audience members as well as witnesses. I am not a caricaturist, rather I try to capture the essence of the person, a feeling for them. If I can make it resemble them a bit, I am very happy. I want to share the experience of the event. I also write a lot, capturing things I hear and putting it on the paper with the pencil lines.

Being in the room where it is accepted that some people are drawing is a nice feeling. It was comforting. Sometimes when I am live drawing at an event where there are cameras and videographers, I feel a tad on display (even when I try to stay annonymous). I feel like an oddity.

Today watching my fellow artists, I have to admit there were times when I questioned my work as compared to theirs. But I cautioned myself to stop it, because we are so different and serve unique purposes for this event.

Should I live draw a trial again —and I would love to— I might bring color in the form of colored pencils. But then maybe I won’t: there is something nice about a simple pencil line. And color is not always necessary to tell the story.

I’ll post all the other drawings tomorrow. I wish I could go to a third day of the trial, but another commitment makes it not possible. I am enojoying this so much. Maybe next week? I am not sure….