Jane Rosenberg keeps her “go” bag by the front door. She never knows when she’ll get the call and have to head to court — not to argue a case but to draw it.
For more than 40 years, Rosenberg has traveled the country and sat ringside for some of the most dramatic high-profile trials, including those of Bill Cosby, Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein, John Gotti, and (multiple times) Donald Trump. After this spring’s Trump trial, “I needed a break desperately,” she said in a recent video interview from her home in New York.
In her new book, “Drawn Testimony,” she describes some of the costs of sitting that close to the action. “I have drawn scenes, including a man’s execution in the electric chair, that have left me feeling guilty, washing and rewashing my hands to expunge something more than pastel dust,” she writes.
Court sketch artists are a dwindling breed. But they remain vital because photographers aren’t allowed into many courtrooms, and artificial intelligence isn’t quite ready to take over. It’s a stressful and often wrenching job. “Oh no, it’s not happy,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg must work quickly to memorize the details of her subjects and capture them as precisely as she can using messy pastel pencils. She wears plastic covers over some of her fingertips, which have worn down over the years, and sometimes uses binoculars. The hectic nature of the job hasn’t kept critics at bay. Writing in Slate, Luke Winkie called her work a combination of “majestic” and “bizarre.”
Then came the 2015 trial over a scandal known as “Deflategate,” featuring then-Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Rosenberg, who is not a football fan, was one of the few living Americans who didn’t know who Brady was. When she saw him in the courtroom, she writes, “I couldn’t quite work out what defined him, what made that face Tom Brady … he was all chiseled and cropped, smooth and almost disconcertingly featureless.”
The drawing she produced had a certain Herman Munster-like quality, and the internet went mad. Rosenberg had her 15 minutes of infamy, appearing on television and radio shows to explain her creation.
In between Brady’s first and second appearance in court, Rosenberg studied his visage like a quarterback watching film. “For that two weeks, I lived and breathed Tom Brady, sitting in my studio as sketch after sketch of him piled up around me,” she writes. Although she was not completely satisfied with it, her second sketch was good enough to get a simple thank you from the seven-time Super Bowl champion.
Despite the pressure, Rosenberg says: “I love what I do. I love drawing. I love being paid for drawing, and I love having a front-row seat at the most exciting trials.” During our exchange, she explained her technique, her brushes with fame, and how she continues to do what she does.
Q. How did you become a court sketch artist?
A. After college, I did portraits for tourists in Cape Cod. But I got tired of that and I came back to New York and went to a lecture of the courtroom artist Marilyn Church, and I thought, wow, I’d really like to do that. I had some lawyer friends who took me to night court and I put together a portfolio. One day the court officers let me sit in the jury box with two other artists [during an arraignment]. I did my sketch and I went home and I thought, I’ve got to try to sell this. The case was Craig Crimmins, who was later convicted of murdering a violinist on the roof of the Metropolitan Opera House. I sold it to NBC. After that I kept getting calls. Next was the trial of Mark David Chapman, who was convicted of killing John Lennon.
Q. Tell me about a typical day in the courtroom, if there is such a thing.
A. I will get a call from a news service and run downtown with my kit and a change of clothes — I tend to wear a lot of dark-colored clothes because I make a mess and I don’t wear an apron. Hopefully I’ll be the first one there and choose the best seat and set up all my art supplies. I have to finish the sketch right then and there. I have to memorize my subject right then and there. I never bring the art home. When I’m done, it goes right on the news.
Q. Other than the one of Tom Brady, are there other drawings you wish you had done differently?
A. A lot of them. The one of Madoff in handcuffs, his arms were too short; but it’s too late, it’s out there. I cringe, but I felt so tortured, I redid it for myself.
Q. What’s the fastest you’ve ever had to complete a drawing?
A. If it’s an arraignment, like the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, very fast. Six or seven minutes. But sometimes arraignments last a long time. Like the Trump arraignment for the hush money trial. There were a lot of arguments before they actually arraigned him. Then the prosecutor read the 34 counts out loud, and that took some more time. When I sat down, I started drawing all the court officers, the security — I’ve never seen that much in the courtroom. They were lined up in every row.
And then Trump walked in, and I drew him. I did one sketch. I didn’t finish it, and then suddenly he spoke into a microphone and said, “Not guilty.” So I took out a sheet of paper, because now I thought, I have to draw him speaking into the microphone. But as soon as I had this blank sheet up, I looked at him and now he was turning and facing the prosecutor, kind of glaring at him, and I got to see him from a front view. So I decided, I have to get this face.
Q. How often do people on the stand acknowledge you?
A. Occasionally. It depends where I’m sitting. Though when I was on Trump’s civil fraud trial, which was in a state court, they put all the artists right up against the rail. Whenever anybody entered the courtroom, including ex-president Trump and Don Jr. — whoever walked in, they walked in right behind us and could see what we were doing. Donald Trump started to acknowledge me, because he had seen me in D.C., he’d seen me in Florida, and so now I’m a familiar face. So he started to say, “Hello, how are you?” Sometimes he just mouthed a greeting, or I would get a nod.
But one day it was Don Jr.’s turn to testify, and he didn’t say anything to me at first. But during a break he walks by me and says, “Look what they did to Sam Bankman-Fried, they made him look like a superstar,” and showed me a drawing on his phone from that trial, insinuating I should do the same for him. I said: “That’s fake. That’s not even what he looks like.” It was an artificial-intelligence sketch. And another time he walked by and said, “Make me look sexy.”
Q. I’m gathering that didn’t affect how you drew him.
A. No, it didn’t.
Q. You have witnessed some emotionally harrowing moments. I’m thinking, for instance, of Susan Smith, who drowned her children in 1994, and the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, Derek Chauvin’s trial. How do you cope with the weight of all this?
A. I’ve witnessed some horrible, horrible things, but I have to stay neutral, to the best of my ability. During the trial of Susan Smith, my child was the same age as her children. I remember listening to the testimony of how she strapped them in the car seat and let them roll into the lake. I was heartbroken. And then had to listen to what happens to a body when somebody drowns. I was horrified. I was actually crying. I had to be careful that the tears didn’t land on my pastels because they would have ruined them.
Q. How do you find the strength to go out and do it again? What do you do to unwind?
A. I meditate every day, twice a day. And I have been doing that every single day since 1973. I’d say I’m addicted to the meditation at this point, because if I don’t, all I can think about is: I need to meditate. So, that centers me and gets me going and ready for the day in court.
DRAWN TESTIMONY: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist
By Jane Rosenberg
Hanover Square. 256 pages, $30
