March Sketches
As the Court’s March sitting began most of the attention was on the confirmation hearings for judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Here are some sketches from the sparsely attended arguments.
February Sitting Sketches
The big news in January: The announcement that Justice Breyer will retire after the last opinion of the term is delivered. A greatly admired and deeply humble man, Justice Breyer is famous for the expansive, and sometimes weird, hypothetical questions he asks during argument. With wonderful body language and an expressive face he is one of the most fun to draw. I wish him the best, and hope he continues to ride his bike without mishaps.
I don’t know why but as retirement approaches it has become increasingly difficult to bring myself to post the sketches to this blog. Forgive me. I will attempt to wrap it up and get up to date with these next three posts.
Seems someone left a fire extinguisher by the bench on the first day of the February sitting. It was gone the next day.
January SCOTUS Sketches
The Court started the January sitting early with an emergency hearing on vaccine-or-test mandates. Unfortunately I was out sick ( not COVID ) for that argument which of course was the biggie news-wise. I did make it back to in-person arguments the following week, and here, better late than never, are the sketches:
About Me
Courtroom sketching is a form of visual journalism or reportage drawing that is slowly dying out. Where once upon a time news organization each had their own artist covering a story, today a “pool” artist often sketches for all. It is a demanding and stressful discipline where the drawing is often done directly and under tight deadline.
After forty-five years of news sketching in courtrooms and congress I’m calling it quits. It’s been sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, almost always interesting. I’ve been lucky to work with some really great people. Don’t think I’ll miss it, but a little scared of not having a deadline.
While I won’t be sketching in court anymore, I may continue to post to this blog from time to time. Not sure what that might be. I’m about to start a new assignment documenting infrastructure and construction. Could be interesting.
Read More > 
