“IT WAS IN THE Final Moment of Sean “DIDY” COMBS ‘MARATHON FEDERAL TRIAL TRIAL WHEN ELIZABETH WILLIAMS Found Her Eyes Loked with The Rap Mogul for the First Time. The Career Sketch Artist Had Followed His Movements in the Courtronic, Sometimes Using Binoculars to Capture Him. She was mirroring his expression of absolute shock that moment”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
“I SAW this face,“ she told The Hollywood Reporterpointing to a sketch, from her tight Midtown Manhattan Studio Space in What is Upstairs Nail Salon. “HE was soled. I’ve Drawn His Face So Much So It Was Easy to Get It. He Was Relatively Close to Me. I COULDNN’T BELIEVE IT. I DON’T THINK HE COULD EITHER.”
She have been Sketching Since 1980, Toggling Between Fashion Illustration and Criminal Courtronic. But as Strange Days Hit the Worlds of News and Couture, Her Subject Matter Has Verered Away from Runway Struts and Toward the Legal Drama Unfolding in Federal and Criminal Coo.
Williams Digs Out Stacks of Sketches, Showing Her Renderings Of The Most Definitive Legal Moments of the Past Few Decades. There’s Martha Stewart, Surrounded by Bodyguards (“All thesee Older Men That Martha Wanted To Be Around”). There’s One from The Pizza Connection Mafia Case. A livid Stormy Daniels Being Cross-Examined by Michael Avenatti, Ghislaine Maxwell Leaning in with Her Attorney, Luigi Mangione’s Sneakers and Donald Trump’s Acrdio. THESE CASES MOST TENSE Moments.
“My go-to materials? A brush pen with two sides. A big orange crayon, High-end, oil-bassed. A Water Brush,” She Explands, THEN DETAILING The Craft. “I Work with Line, Not Pastel. That’s A West Coast Thing. East Coasters Do Portraiture with Pastels. I Build Structure from Line. Line Is Truth.”
In this courtroom Sketch, Flanked by Defense Attorneys Teny Geragos, Left, and Brian Steel, Right, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Center, Reacts After He was Denied Bail on. Manhattan Federal Court in New York. Elizabeth Williams/AP Images
But It Wasn’t Her Memorable Rendering of That Shared Moment of Locked-Eyed Shock With Diddy that Made the Cover of the Daily News an Newday. Williams Sketched The Moment that the Mogul Droped to His Knees to Thank the Lord After He Beat the Bulk of the Feds’ CHARGES. She describes the Scene surrounding the verdict as “Drawing a person Falling Out of a Window.”
For Williams, The Work of A SKETCH ARTIST IS About Transmitting the Mood in the ROOM IN THESE Moments. All of the Drama Should Come Through.
“I Want People to See It Like I SAW IT. I WANT THEM TO GET A SENSE OF BEING THERE,“ She Says. In a sketch of cassie venture waling Past combs after testifying – his former Partner, Turned “Victim 1” and a Key Witness for the Prosecution – Williams Managed Toval.
“They Were Like Ships in the Night. Ten Years of Intimacy, and Now they might as well be on digferent Planets,” She Said.
In this courtroom Sketch, Combs Reacts After He Was Convicted of Prostity-Related Offenses But Acquitted of Sex Trafficking and Racquetening Charges that Could. Elizabeth Williams/AP Images
Over The Decades She’s Been at It, The Job Of A SKETCH ARTIST HAS SHRUNK AND SHIFTED ALONG with the News Media. GONE ARE DAYS OF HER Mentors and First Years Cutting Her Teeth Jetting AROUND WITH FANCY MEALS AND EXPENSE AcCOUNTS. Nowadays, She Knows She Has A Day Work Ahead if the Phone Rings in the Morning. She admits that it is slawly becking increASINGly untenable. She is Now One of ONLY a FEW SKETCH ARTISTS COVERTING Nationwide – WHEN Cameras Are Barred from the Courtron, they Provide Out only visual cluses to what kind of unfolding.
“IT doesn’t pay well. It dosn’t have regular hours. The News Business Has Changed. We used to get Flown all over – NBC, CBS, ABC Had The Budgets,” She Said. “NOW? IT’s Social Media. Dilution.”
Neverthaless, Williams Has The TEMPERment of a Seasoned Pro WHO WOULDNN’T TRADE HER FRONT ROW SEAT to SEVERAL OF MODERN HISTORY’S KEY Moments for Anything. And She’s Committed to Documenting History in Real Time, One Trial at A Time.
“Individuals Must be as Pictured. You Can’T Make Stuff Up. That’s How and Was Taught,” She Says. “I Want People To See It Like I SAW IT. I WANT THEM TO GET A SENSE OF BEING THERE.”