Art of the Courtroom 3:

Let’s Be Brief

Weeks worth of my collection of used ID bracelets for court entry starting to look like patriotic flower arrangement (left), a sketchpage from a small book I completed this week (right).

I continue to offer Counter Arts and Medium readers sketch art that I do in the federal trial, U.S. v. Thao, et al. with three former police officers (now defendants) under criminal scrutiny in a district court in downtown St. Paul (MN).

Last week the courthouse went on hiatus, after a two-day week. One defendant had been diagnosed with Covid. So Judge Magnuson sent the jury home on a Wednesday morning for the remainder of the week, a safe and smart move.

In my column for week 2, I mentioned how packed the courtroom seemed to me. That said, the jury has been encased by plex-partitions and everyone in court is required to be masked save when they testify. All one can assume is the spread of Covid remains unpredictable.

Meanwhile, there was the killing of Amir Locke in neighboring Minneapolis, a news item that was tragic and became of global interest. How it might affect the outcome of this trial may well stay hung in the air.

So, it seemed a good week to describe a creative brief, an interesting and necessary artist-client planning document.

Anatomy of a creative brief
The term “brief” is said to have originated with the military but it also sounds legal, and in part it is, as it is derived from — or leads to — contract or a letter of agreement between contractor and client. If you are running a creative business it is typically prepared by an artist or designer with a half dozen parts, as point forms such as:

● Context
● Audience
● Goal (denotations: facts, connotations: feelings, i.e., “look-feel”)
● Deliverables, ownership
● Timing
● Budget

A local affiliate had contacted me back in January about doing courtroom sketches for them. I never did offer them a formal brief in writing, rather I talked by phone with the rep and we covered four of the above point forms. Mainly we discussed the look/feel part of the goal — along with timing of delivery.

One thing clients want is work samples, so I provided them. It was easy for me as everything was on my Flickr portal.

Figure 1: Sketches of noted paintings and sculpture I copied at the Minneapolis Institute of Art over several years. My goal during those years was to try out a variety of illustration styles with various tools upon different surfaces. I reasoned a media-client “wanna-be” could pick and choose a preferred style. Turns out the rep I spoke to just said, “I don’t know about art or creative approaches, we just want super-realist and have it done very, very fast.” (I thought the next sentence might be, “I’ll know and like it when I see it.”) Such musings rarely end up in a creative brief, a good thing.

Figure 2: My sketches in county courtrooms over several years. The media rep I spoke with declined conversing about these approaches in terms of look-feel, thus our chat sort of petered out.

A creative brief really should occur in art and design industries, often it is the very first task. If/when a creative brief is formally signed off, it serves to clarify matters that can morph into a good product or service. Stated another way, if its half-dozen issues are left unaddressed then barriers can arise, very quickly.

Over the years I had had exactly one contract with a media outlet, Bloomberg, a year ago. The paperwork — involving editorial, finance, and legal — was endless. I had forgotten about all the pdf documents demanded; they take time (I had not operated as a business since 2015.)

My “verbal creative brief” that addressed four key parts was ultimately declined. Requests to me from two other media outlets had also started with an email exchange but both parties declined to take a phone call from me, a sure path to a dead end. In the end I was not to be “in the bidness” of commercial court illustration.

I took a look at my courthouse ID badge, it read “freelance artist.” So I decided to become exactly that, but with an emphasis on the word “free.” I simply put my sketches in the public domain, with Creative Commons licensing, in keeping with one of the particular standards offered by Medium.

Week 3 results

One important lesson learned so far: Starting a sketch is easy, finishing it, not so much.

Figure 3: Another of my frequent courthouse sketches that started in outline but are yet to be finished. (I am good at starting, less so at completing. ) This is a lively and savvy relative of Mr. George Floyd, Jr. (RIP) who has been in daily attendance the same weeks as have I. Side note: I inquired of the most senior journalist in the trial’s media pool to see if his supervisor ever approved an interview as part of trial coverage; he responded promptly, sharing this, “I checked but unfortunately I can’t. I’m just too tied up with my own trial coverage.” If a possibly dramatic or interesting human-centered story looms — regrettably — journalists may be compelled to forego such a path due to the pressing practicalities of “their day job.”

Figure 4: A two-part montage on process — mainly technical — pertaining to challenges a court artist faces… Top, this is a test (unfinished) sketch of which I remained dissatisfied, in part because my back-row vantage point often creates too much overlap of figures: defendants (in this trial not one but three), their attorneys (ditto three), a witness, the judge, clerks, prosecutor, a bit of a foreground-background mess ! Bottom, after scanning my test drawing I moved it into Adobe software that allowed me to create a “bird’s eye view” with special tools that helped me declutter the scene more. I could (say) rotate the witness and prosecutor so they more directly faced each other, shrink the judge slightly so he was put at a more proper distance, etc. Feedback I received was 1) that it now looks and feels a bit stiff, and 2) court art is often judged better if and when it looks like it was done with more gesture, i.e., a visual kind of “breaking” news. Worth a try though, given our hiatus.

Figure 5: I mentioned last week how the gallery seats being hardwood made me feel like I was in church. So a grabbed one of the day’s off from court, walked to the Cathedral of St. Paul, took at all in, quieted my mind, and then sketched some of the patrons queued up for confession on wooden seats/pews. I reasoned an effort to see and draw in an environment “180 degrees” from a courthouse setting might clear my mind and maybe reengage with color missing from the weeks that I had been in court. Sketching on black stock helps dramatize hues, and what better for that than composing my sketch with a stained-glass window as backdrop? (In court color spots are mainly a large seal, an American flag and occasional bright ties and scarves of attendees. And, of course, those blue masks.)

Figure 6: Did events that filled the rest of my shortened week help me in substantive ways? Above: Top left, witness, Dr. David Systrom, Pulmonary Critical Care, Harvard; top center, Manda Sertich, Assistant U.S. Attorney. This sketch was one of my efforts upon my return to court sketching in a recent week. For one thing I used black paper surface as in figure 5. (I’ll simply let you the viewer decide.) More of these in my column next week.

Continuing to be brief, my closer: more about context

I have been in the Burger courthouse every day of this trial, exactly four weeks now. It’s not easy on all fronts, but I love it. The presiding judge, Hon. Paul Magnuson, turned 85 this week. He might’ve chosen to retire long ago, his daily effort then perhaps doing a crossword puzzle, fish, whatever. I asked myself, “Could I stay as active and quick-minded as does this gent if I was, like him, a decade and half older?”

Figure 7: A couple gesture sketches of the presiding judge, my goal is to keep doing them of recurring “courtroom notables “in order to capture different views, expressions, and possible emotive states of mind as a memory aid and as reference for future use.

Acknowledgement: Editing assistance courtesy Kathy Heuer. Errors that might remain are mine and mine alone.

J. Kevin Byrne (MA/Minnesota, MFA/Cranbrook, MSc-Cert./Saint Mary’s) is Professor (now Emeritus) at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MN/USA). He has published in print and continues to do so online. Feel free to Link-in to him here.

This blog’s narrative matter and sketch images are assigned Creative Commons license by-nd 4.0 (2022).