What’s it like to draw the Trump brothers? They’re “kind of action figure-y and ready for TV,” Isabelle Brourman says.
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.
