Pastel by pastel, courtroom sketch artists capture historic moments involving high-profile defendants, attentive judges and impassioned witnesses from gavel to gavel.
Prominent illustrators like Jane Rosenberg and Christine Cornell have been gallery mainstays throughout the often graphic sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs in Manhattan federal court, where photography and cameras are prohibited.
The aging, shrinking community of quick-thinking artists provides the public its only peek into proceedings that most citizens won’t see, working feverishly to finish up to six pieces per day — depending on the number of people or scenes involved.
“I’m always under pressure,” Rosenberg told Newsweek. “It’s a high-pressure job.”
The prolific sketch started drawing in 1980 and is one of the handful of veteran court documenters in New York, said she’s attended “every single iota” of Combs’ ongoing case, including pretrial conferences. Her experience with the hip-hop mogul dates back to his 2001 acquittal on gun possession charges linked to a shooting at a Manhattan nightclub two years earlier.
“He walks into court and he seems like he’s in a great mood when he comes in the room,” Rosenberg said of Combs’ recent demeanor. “He’s all smiley, waving to people, like throwing kisses, doing little hearts with his hands and hugging each one of his lawyers — every single one of them gets a hug. And he’s all happy in the morning; that’s how he looks.”
Combs, 55, who faces up to life in prison if convicted on the top charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution, typically takes a very active role in his defense throughout most proceedings, Rosenberg said.
“He passes a lot of notes during testimony,” she said. “You know, he’s not just sitting there like a lump, I’ll tell you that. He’s paying attention.”
Rosenberg said her approach throughout six weeks of proceedings, including dramatic testimony from Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and rapper Kid Cudi, remains unchanged from previous celebrity cases.
“It’s always the same,” she said. “I have to go into a courtroom, see where I’m going to be sitting and try to figure out what’s about to happen, but I don’t always know.”
When witnesses spend multiple days on the stand — such as Combs’ former girlfriend “Jane” who testified using an alias — Rosenberg shifts her focus to developing fresh themes. She recently concentrated on how the defendant simply entered the courtroom.
“Today he was having a consultation with a bunch of lawyers,” Rosenberg said Wednesday. “He was kind of looking like he had in hands in a praying [position], you know. I can’t hear words because I’m not that close to hear what they’re talking about.”
Rosenberg, who has been illustrating Combs’ trial on contract with the Reuters news agency, declined to indicate her age — “just say old and that’s enough,” she said — or how much she earns annually as one of the preeminent courtroom sketch artists living and working in Manhattan.
Cornell, Rosenberg’s colleague who has been chronicling courts for 50 years, said she brings home roughly $100,000 per year for her efforts, which are currently featured on CNN. The 70-year-old resident of Weehawken, New Jersey, has drawn countless notable defendants throughout her extensive career, including John Gotti, Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump, among many others. Like Rosenberg, her artistic approach for each remains identical, she said.
“In the same way I approach any trial,” Cornell told Newsweek. “To really capture the characters and give them their best representation.”
Cornell said “Jane” and “Mia,” Combs’ former assistant who also testified under a pseudonym, were compelling witnesses whose identities had to be protected, meaning their faces couldn’t be depicted.
“Well, you know, body language,” Cornell said of how she addressed that challenge. “And you have to keep it minimal in terms of lighting that reveals features. But you can show anguish and grief just with angle of the head and, you know, just hit a few spots and throw the rest in shadow. Anybody who’s observed life knows that there’s an extreme simplification you can take on any human emotion and expression, especially if there’s something a little bit awful going on, which frankly has been more common than not in this trial.”
Cornell said “Mia,” who accused Combs of sexual assault, notably kept her head down throughout her entire testimony.
“The whole time,” Cornell said. “She would not raise her eyes once at anyone in the courtroom, even when she left the courtroom. It was like she almost had put a bag over her head. She was going in, she was going out and she wasn’t connecting with anyone. She was trying not to and I think that’s the only thing she could do to have the strength to do what she did.”
Cornell said Combs’ former girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, provided the most artistically compelling testimony thus far, in part because she took the stand publicly — and heavily pregnant.
“That meant I could really take the deep dive underneath her skin and try and show all she’s presenting — her anguish and her pride,” Cornell said. “She’s been through a lot, and she came in there to make a powerful presence of somebody who really had to work to be able to hold her head up and talk about this pretty dang hideous episode of her life that made her want to kill herself.”
Ventura, a “beautiful” woman who has since given birth to her third child, had to brave her alleged tormentor throughout four days of testimony, Cornell noted.
“She had so much promise, she was just like a beam of light,” Cornell said. “And bit by bit, he just took away her power.”
While sketch artists like Cornell primarily act as observers in court, they’re not always left alone to create fascinating works of art without input. Sometimes defendants themselves offer suggestions, much like Combs earlier this month when he joked with Rosenberg to “soften him up a bit” and not to make him look like a koala.
“First of all, Diddy doesn’t look like he used to look,” she said. “He’s got gray hair, a white goatee and he’s older. I mean, so it’s a little hard.”
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