Reportage is a practice that largely consists of drawing on location. Most reportage illustrators do most of their sketches on site, sometimes supplementing these with photographs and finalising their work in their studio later for a more polished look if they wish to. For this reason, most illustrators will work in sketchbooks or loose paper, and with portable materials like ink, pencils, pens and watercolours, with digital illustration becoming a bit more popular in recent years thanks to the iPad. Weather conditions and the timeframe for the brief will limit the kinds of materials that an illustrator will choose, as they will have to consider how the materials will dry, and how easily they will be transported of they need to quickly move around.

Courtroom illustration has a distinctly different process, since illustrators are not allowed to draw while in the room. Instead, they rely on their memory and handwritten notes, taking notice of people’s main features and dynamics during the trial. They have to work with extremely tight deadlines, no longer than a couple of hours before their work needs to be sent to be featured in the next news cycle.

When trying to capture the atmosphere of a location or event, likeness and exactness can take a step back. If an illustrator is trying to capture the frantic energy of a busy street, using quick marks to create an overall impression of the crowd and its movement can communicate more effectively than focusing on a detailed rendition, and people will rarely stand still for long enough to be drawn in detail. The illustrator’s main goal is to capture the focus of their image, whether it is a gesture, a relationship between subjects or someone’s expression, and surrounding elements of the composition can sometimes be completely skipped or rendered in a lot less detail.

Courtroom artist Priscilla Coleman draws from memory and notes.