00:00there's so many things happening you know we did this and that and then it's over then he's out of
00:15the room you have to be able to figure out what are those key moments my focus is on diddy yeah
00:28right right because that's what everybody's asking me about or what what is he what is diddy doing
00:33right so well no one can see it so you're the you're the eyes and ears exactly so i've that
00:38responsibility my name is elizabeth williams i am a courtroom illustrator
00:49he's so larger than life you're focused on him look at him his family and then you've got
01:00witnesses i mean my goodness and like just look at all these lawyers it's like this isn't even all of
01:06them one two three four five six seven eight just think about that i mean most people okay if i just
01:16pull out a picture from another trial this is a classic defense right two lawyers even trump one
01:27two three lawyers three lawyers three lawyers for trump eight lawyers for diddy
01:33i live in new york and i've been doing this drawing people and things and fashion and crime since 1980
01:52and still do fashion but whatever not so much anymore crime pays folks crime pays not fashion oh well
02:00damn you usually start with the head when you're drawing somebody yeah i think the head or sometimes
02:08the eyes especially like with diddy when he had that that note and you know they were like gathering
02:17around him i mean everybody thought oh boy diddy's going down well they did get a conviction
02:24during diddy's verdict it's like drawing like a person falling out of a window because he's
02:39doing this he's doing this he's doing this he's doing you know i mean the audience is doing something
02:46and also you have time constraints so you got to figure out what will be important to news editors
02:54right now i work primarily for the ap cnbc and sometimes tmz they're rolling deadlines but they
03:00want it as soon as possible more often than not you know you'll send something out and you'll be
03:05upset because she could have worked on that some more but also if you sit there and fiddle around
03:10with a picture forever it's never going to see the light of day and then up people will be bugged
03:14because like where's the ap pictures yesterday i did seven sent out seven because there was so much
03:20going on i mean there was there was the verdict and all those reactions um and then there was the
03:28when he got the bail hearing and he didn't get bail he turned to me i mean i saw this face he was so
03:36shocked and i've drawn his face so much so it was easy to kind of go like okay oh my god you know he's
03:42and he was relatively close to me so i mean that was that was what he looked like he couldn't believe it
03:48i couldn't believe it you know i feel a big sense of responsibility because of that because i'm
03:54really trying to inform people of what happened in the courtroom you know so i really i want them
04:00to see it like i saw it you know i mean i want them to get a sense of being there you know i mean
04:08and i've always felt this way i mean when you look at this drawing this is for the pizza connection
04:12case in 1985 this was done for nbc news but you know i want to give people a sense of you're sitting in
04:17the courtroom with me and you get a sense of where you are in space in that drawing right i mean it's
04:24the same thing with all of them so what would you say your go-to materials are that you would take
04:30for like a quick courtroom sketch a brush pen that has two sides sometimes you want this thick one
04:38really fast and then sometimes you want the thinner line i'll never take these colors to court
04:43i don't need those colors i mean all right mangione with the orange i have some orange now i have been
04:50caught flat-footed without orange i have i admit it some of these like basically they're big crayons
04:57okay they're big high-end crayons they're oil-based this is called the water brush and it works really well
05:06the difference too i should say between the way i approach it
05:09and the way other artists and in the east coast approach it i have a line based approach okay mine's
05:17all line and then i put in the color right the line is the foundation of it right uh pastel artists who
05:25are primarily portrait artists all right they're dealing with shade form in a different way and
05:34they're building it up in a completely different way that is the structure of their picture the structure
05:40of my picture is based on this line here see and then see i don't like the way that looks so i'm just gonna
05:49take that out i'm gonna cover that up with my handy dandy white oil pastel
05:56see west coast that's how i was brought up west coast no east coast no pastel that's the main
06:09difference we don't well it's it's also the way you approach it you approach it with wine
06:13you're sitting just like charles manson this is very interesting
06:16yeah you and charlie yeah see arms folded you're smudging with your finger is it just as a it's
06:29easier than like using a brush or is there yeah and then also if you're using a brush it can you can
06:35start to lose control of it you know and white's white's a funny color white actually to do white right
06:42really takes a long time because white isn't really white as i learned in art school it's really all relative
06:53so you it's not really white
07:04how would you describe like the tone of the trial like compared to others other trials it was pretty
07:09intense i mean it was pretty intense the schedule and the type of testimony it was
07:21well a lot of them were unsettling but he would hand them post-its and read things and also would
07:29keep his eye on the jury i mean he was as i said like this even though it's the one that chose his clothing
07:35but you know he's over here he's watching his lawyer he's watching the jury i mean and also but
07:42then you look at man jown i mean man jown's doing the same thing right man jown is reading this is him
07:47reading the indictment okay a lot of them don't do that i sort of remember parts of her cassie's testimony
07:55i just remember that when she passed him i thought that was such a juxtaposition
08:01i managed to get her as she walked off the stand she passed him as he's standing up and the two of
08:08them and they just like literally like ships in the night i got that drawing i got a lot of play
08:15because that was like now you're worlds apart here you were this 10-year-long relationship
08:22extraordinarily intimate and now you might as well be on another planet like this is um the thinking
08:32out loud ed sheeran um copyright trial and he his guitar and he actually played a few things for the
08:43played a few lines for the jury martha stewart so martha had all these bodyguards
08:48because she was out on bail older men that martha wanted to be around r kelly verdict because it's
08:58sort of hard to get his expression because he's wearing a mask but he was found guilty we couldn't
09:04really see r kelly because r kelly was all done from an overflow feed because it was the middle of
09:10the pandemic did he was you know he was easy to draw and so was trump they don't care they're
09:15they've got bigger fish to fry the only time i ever really had a problem was with the trump drawing
09:20and that was because he was a little upset and i drew him that way and but i got his hands let me see
09:26if i can find this picture here i got the hands you know the accordion hands that's how he talks
09:34hands he was on the stand and he looks upset
09:36the news business has changed and um it's a totally different business now than it was when i started
09:46it was the big three nbc cbs and abc and they had all the advertising dollars and they used to fly us
09:56all over the place i'll never forget anyway those days are gone it's just a different business entirely
10:03because of social media and the dilution of news the ones who started 10 15 years before me boy they
10:11had a great run plus they were paid a lot and then there were people on contracts i mean it was
10:19so different than today i don't know you know it's a hard job and it doesn't pay a lot and it doesn't
10:28have regular hours so i don't know what they're gonna do individuals must be as pictured as they
10:34were in the courtroom i mean you know you just can't make stuff up but that's the way i was taught
10:40when i started out in l.a that's how they did it how everybody did it drew it the way it was not
10:47something convenient yeah wouldn't i love this to be different boy i sure would have i hated this
10:58it was so this was so nice because i could draw them this way and they were like looked like this
11:03that was so nice so much experience being a trial um as you you know sit through them
11:10are you ever ever able to predict the outcome no i i kind of thought it was going to be a little
11:16hard with diddy to prove rico you're surprised at how fast they turned around yeah i was i was surprised
11:22at how fast i turned around and it was an acquittal yeah right yeah because that's what happened like
11:27when they came to him and they said there's this note what was this yeah a fast note i mean they're
11:37all like freaking out you know i mean they're grabbing each other holding each other they're
11:43freaking out you're sitting there and you're like okay yeah i'm sure he's bracing for the worst you
11:48know and you're sitting there like okay this is gonna be you know and like what's gonna what's the
11:53family gonna do and i have to be prepared and all this and then boom not guilty boom not guilty the
12:01falling down on the chair the praying when the jury walked out all that occurred after the fact because
12:08now he's really sort of coming to terms with what just occurred now this on the other hand was
12:17was the shock the shock sketch that was immediate and i i i was just i must have had the same face
12:26because i was like he didn't show a lot of his emotions i mean i that was really the most emotion
12:33i've seen now maybe that was also intentional for the jury because you sort of hear about this guy's
12:40temper and his mercurial nature and you know and i would take the binoculars sometimes and try to
12:47study and see what he's doing and i never saw a tear come out of his eyes i mean i saw him do this
12:58sometimes he would do this you know rub his eyes but he never kind of broke down i think the violence and
13:05stuff i think he it did seem to bother him the violence he had his hand in his head he i think
13:11he felt bad about that you know the sexual stuff i i don't know i don't know well he's gonna get
13:18something and this judge seems to be the judge seems to be pretty serious about it you see but
13:23i mean still he could have been going to prison for the rest of his life so i mean boy
13:28this whole experience being a courtroom artist and covering these cases has really given me a great
13:40sense of history and the importance of doing the job right
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