Why Court Sketch Artist Likes Drawing Eric, Donald Trump Jr.

There has been a nonstop parade of recognizable faces at Donald Trump‘s criminal trial. On the witness stand, in the rows of the courtroom and in the overflow room, high-profile figures, Trump allies and even prime-time news anchors have made an appearance at 100 Centre Street in New York City.

But the best-dressed person in the courtroom is not among that crowd. She’s not even one of the dozens of reporters filling the seats. Instead, she’s one of three court sketch artists who spend their days scribbling on large canvases, documenting the historic criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

Isabelle Brourman—often sporting a large, bedazzled headband and tights that make her legs look as if they’re covered in tattoos—has spent the past five weeks inside the courtroom with Trump, diligently caricaturing the former president and the other people in the room. From star prosecution witness Michael Cohen to members of Trump’s entourage—including Lara Trump and Representative Lauren Boebert—Brourman is not trying to capture just the details of the courtroom and its participants. She’s also going for the feeling of being in that courtroom on the 15th floor of Manhattan Criminal Court, when she draws the testimony and the court theatrics.

“People ask me, ‘What’s it like? How are you doing?’ And those are things that we don’t really consider when we’re looking back on historic documents. What were people feeling in the room?” Brourman told Newsweek during a live interview at her studio.

Her vibrant, collage-like images are unconventional. Unlike the other court sketch artists who produce snapshots of the trial, Brourman fills her canvases with overlapping images of the defendant, the witnesses, exhibits of evidence, quotes from the attorneys and, in one drawing, even the plastic bag that her lunch came in.

“It said, ‘Thank you for your business,’ and I ended up sort of pasting it onto the drawing for the day,” she said. “It was the day that Jeffrey McConney was on the stand, and I thought that was kind of perfect because he was the former controller [of the Trump Organization].”

Within the layers of her sketches, observers see various members of the Trump family who have accompanied the patriarch to his trial. Brourman said they’re all “fun” to draw because they’re “kind of action figure-y and ready for TV.” She said she particularly enjoys drawing Trump’s son Eric, who has become a mainstay in the front row behind his father, because of his eyes.

“He has a forehead that sort of creates a darkness in his eyes, so getting that right and the mood of his face is fun for me, and it sort of matches the mood in the room, something that’s looming,” Brourman said.

“Don Jr., he’s more of a showman. He comes in and his shoulders are back really far and his head is tilted up, his chin is up, his nose is up. He has an attitude that is compelling for somebody that’s drawing.”

Brourman has had time to hone her skills for drawing the Trump family. She also sketched last year’s New York state civil fraud trial against the former president and the Trump Organization. But practice does not always make perfect, she said. The criminal trial, unlike the civil one, has been more difficult for the artist because of all the security surrounding Trump.

“His visibility is a little less reliable,” she said. “There are officers that are standing on both sides. There’s a lot more showmanship as to who’s coming in, so there’s also the challenge of ‘Who’s this person? Is this important? What’s the story here?'”

The block where the courthouse sits has been inundated with law enforcement officials. Secret Service members surround Trump’s camp, court officers from as far as Queens and the Bronx have been called to assist their colleagues in Manhattan, and outside the sidewalks are covered with steel barricades. Police officers are ubiquitous and order people to “Keep it moving!” if anyone so much as stops to check a phone. If you show up while Trump’s making his way to court, it’s likely a handful of officers will rush to tell you the area is under “freeze.”

Brourman began drawing courtroom scenes during the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard trial. At first, she sketched out portraits while following the case on YouTube. But it wasn’t long before she drove down to Fairfax, Virginia, and stood in the public line to draw inside the courtroom where the high-profile defamation case was unfolding. After realizing through veteran sketch artist Bill Hennessy that artists can be credentialed in the courts, she modeled herself on him.

To Brourman, each trial is different from the next. She said what drew her to Trump’s criminal trial is “the situation that the country is in right now.”

“This trial, the stakes are different,” she said. The trial is “a bizarre combination of theater, real-life implications, politics, entertainment, social weirdness and questioning of what’s artifice and what’s real.”

“In a lot of ways, that’s a really fun challenge because there’s a dynamic quality to this trial that wasn’t as much present in the previous one,” she went on. “The themes of this trial are a lot different than just financial documents. We’re talking about recordings that none of us have ever heard. Being in the space with somebody who took those recordings and then somebody who didn’t know they were being recorded, there’s the drama and tensions of that as well.”

But what is the feeling Brourman herself experiences in the courtroom each day?

“I’ve just been sort of on fire as far as being able to combine the idea of the American imagination with what’s actually going on in here,” she said. “There are emotions and recent histories that contribute to the way that I put down a line or I understand a handshake or a look between two people.”

She continued, “There’s a seriousness, but there’s also a level of humor and absurdity, and that matches with my style really well because I’m someone who is comfortable with chaos.”

Brourman’s style is also reflected in how she plans each day’s outfit. On the day that former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified, she wore a pair of vintage jeans crawling with old magazine covers and dubbed the “Pecker Pants.”

Brourman has tried to be less rigid in her work because of the constant element of surprise and the rapidity of certain moments. That means sometimes throwing away the drawing she’s been focused on perfecting to try to get something else on paper. And while she doesn’t plan to sell any of her works until they go to a show as a collective whole, some of the high-profile individuals in the courtroom have already expressed interest in purchasing the pieces.

“I consider it all one giant document, so I want to keep everything together,” she said.