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And he asks these long questions with these long hybrid bald hypotheticals. “He’s wonderful, very, you know, wonderful body language and moving his hands around. “Oh, that’s got to be Breyer,” he said with a smile. He answered just as quickly when asked what his favorite was. “I just never felt like I really captured her perfectly.” “There wasn’t much change in the court until O’Connor came on the bench,” he explained. “Justice O’Connor was definitely the most difficult,” Lien said immediately. Looking back on his career, we asked him who was the most difficult for him to capture on paper.
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I am very much into building and riding bicycles,” said Lien of what he plans to do in his new free time. I have a big old house that needs a lot of work. I mean, it’s not a full-time job here at the Supreme Court. He noted that some lawyers included memorabilia, family photos, and other momentos in their snapshots in the hopes they would would make it into Lien’s sketches.īut as the pandemic eased and courtrooms reopened, Lien was reluctant to resume the long commute from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., and then he decided it was time to retire his sketch pad. “I contacted all the lawyers that were arguing cases and asked them if they could send a photograph of themselves arguing in front of the speakerphone. Court proceedings were being conducted remotely, including Supreme Court arguments, but it did not deter Lien. When the pandemic hit, everyone’s world was turned upside down. "Much closer to that than a photographer, because I’m sort of compressing time and emphasizing certain things and compressing space as well.” “I think drawing is a lot like storytelling, a lot like what a writer does," he added. “Really, I’m just trying to get to capture something," he said "Am I trying to capture the emotion? Of course, I’m trying to capture the action, the body language, the setting of the courtroom, but, you know, I’m just trying to get something that’s passable." Though he is one of the nation’s top sketch artists, the 70-year-old is still humble when it comes to his craft. Lien has worked for CBS, NBC, and most recently SCOTUSblog, being the eyes inside the courtroom where cameras are not allowed. I love that,” said Lien, as he sketched the exterior of the high court. The people I work with in the press room, I really feel very much at home there. But his main focus was the Supreme Court. Over time, Lien’s body of work continued to grow, covering the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon Bombing trials, the Manafort trail and three presidential impeachment trials. So CBS hired me and that’s how I got my start here.” I don’t think I actually finished one drawing that day. “After the Supreme Court in the morning, we went over to the Senate.
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“He had just covered Watergate, and then the Manson trial and, he sort of took me under his wing and first took me over to the Supreme Court,” Lien recalled. Supreme Court (Art Lien)ĬBS News hired Lien to cover the court and the Senate in 1977 under their top artist, Howard Brodie, a World War II combat artist. Lien then moved on to a bigger court: The U.S. You don’t have to pay me, but I just, I think I know the problem.’ And they didn’t me back.” "I was actually fired by my first day on the job because I did such a terrible job,” he added. "And every time I tilted my drawing pad, everything would run." “I started out with big sheets of non-absorbent paper, and I was using this opaque watercolo," Lien recalled. Lien recalled that things did not go smoothly at first. "And the local station was looking for somebody to sketch the trial. “I started to really worry that this was it,” Lien, now 70, recalled to Spectrum News. It was definitely not the career the art school graduate had in mind. When Lien was twenty-five, he was laying sod and painting houses.
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