Courtroom sketches of the Sean ‘Diddy' Combs trial are drawing quite a reaction

CNN

21-05-2025

Not everyone is loving the sketches coming out of the latest high-profile legal drama.
With cameras prohibited from the federal courtroom for the Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial, media outlets, including CNN, have employed courtroom sketch artists to illustrate the proceedings for the public.
The sketches have sparked occasional criticism on social media for being cartoonish. The Law & Crime Network has even used AI to help dramatize the trial.
Art Lien is a Baltimore-based courtroom sketch artist who has been in the business since the 1970s. He considers his profession more a form of journalism than art and said there are plenty of critics of both.
'Sometimes we don't do great drawings,' he told CNN. 'You're not working under the best conditions. And also, I will say that some of the sketch artists are not really that good.'
Lien said he was actually fired from his first gig.
'I did such a terrible job, but it was really the materials I was bringing in. They weren't good for the courtroom,' he recalled. 'It was watercolors and they ran. I figured out the problem and I told them, 'Just let me go back and you don't have to pay me, but just let me' and they hired me back.'
Having worked on several highly-publicized cases, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's trial, Lien said his sketches have faced a fair amount of scrutiny over the years, like the ones he drew of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Rolling Stone magazine had put a photo of Tsarnaev on the cover and he 'looked kind of romantic,' the artist said.
'When I did my sketches of him in the courtroom that were not as flattering, I just got all this feedback from young women who had kind of fallen for Tsarnaev,' Lien recalled.
Social media - with a never-ending scroll of video and photos - has conditioned the public to expect realistic images in real time. Sketches of celebrities with famous faces are subject to even more judgement.
Cedric Hohnstadt is an illustrator, cartoonist and concept artist who has also worked for years as a courtroom sketch artist. He said the case for having cameras in courtrooms include the need for transparency, as well as the desire to 'increase the peoples' faith in the judiciary process and give them greater trust.'
But he also understands why some trials aren't streamed or photographed.
'Cameras tend to emphasize what's dramatic rather than what's important. They're not always the same thing,' said Hohnstadt, who lives in Minnesota. 'You can have something sensational, but maybe isn't really directly related to the substance of the trial and the charges, that plays better in a video that gets shared and goes viral on social media.'
'Social media rewards a rush to judgment, and the whole point of a trial is to reserve judgment until you've heard both sides,' he added.
Christine Cornell has been sketching the Combs trial for CNN. As she enjoys her 50th year as a courtroom artist, Cornell said she's become less concerned with what people on social media may think about her work.
'Diddy's mom said she liked my work,' Cornell added. 'She tapped me on the shoulder and she gave me a thumbs up and an okay sign.'
Combs is just the most recent celebrity whose likeness she has tried to capture. Some of Cornell's past work includes NFL superstar Tom Brady's 'Deflategate' case and John Gotti's trial in which his underboss, Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano, flipped on the famous mobster.
Cornell, who is based in New Jersey, has been capturing the action at trials for so long that she's seen all of the changes.
'It used to be news crews would wait for us outside and we'd tape it up against the wall or against the side of a news truck. and various stations would stand online to take their turn,' she told CNN. 'Then we got clever.'
Because she had a husband who was a 'techie,' Cornell said, she was an early adopter of using her phone to take pictures of her sketches to send them electronically to her clients.
What has not changed, Lien, Hohnstadt and Cornell all agreed, is the need to make sure you have a good vantage point in courtl. The time allotted also matters because it's more difficult to get an accurate sketch if the courtroom action is quick, they said.
Most importantly, Hohnstadt emphasized, sketch artists act as surrogates for those who cannot attend.
'I try to portray what's happening as fairly as I can and look for things that are interesting or dramatic, but not in a way that editorializes or not in a way that takes away from the substance of what's really happening,' he said. 'Sometimes the most important stuff looks boring.'