Courtroom Artist Again

This past week has been busy. I've been working with our local TV station, WLOS, in covering the trial of Bobby Medford. He's a former sheriff who's been charged with extortion, mail fraud, and other activities related to skimming money from illegal video poker machine operations. Monday and Tuesday were devoted to jury selection and the rest of the week to the prosecution's case. Frankly, it looks like it might go on for a month. But for me, it's fun: sitting in court, working fast, trying to get a likeness that has some character to it, and dealing with all the difficulties of having to sit behind my subjects. I've been working on hot-pressed watercolor paper, doing the drawings with a soft-lead mechanical pencil. About an hour before the scheduled newscast, I go out to the station's van and lay in the watercolor washes. When they're done, the cameraman shoots them and then splices the news report together. Then I take my drawings and go home. Yes, I keep the drawings, they get to show 'em on TV.

Here are some of the drawings I've done so far: