Tom Brady courtroom sketch artist says drawing QB again ‘a nightmare’

Jane Rosenberg, the courtroom sketch artist who was ridiculed for her Aug. 12 rendering of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, took another crack at it Monday during what was expected to be the final Deflategate hearing.

While Rosenberg's latest sketch of Brady was a big improvement over her first one, she said Monday's hearing, which lasted only about five minutes, was "a nightmare."

"I couldn't even see him," Rosenberg told ESPN, who was forced to work mostly from memory. "It was really a nightmare."

Did she think she did a better job this time?

"I don't know. ... I still think he looks a little like 'Lurch' (from The Addams Family)," she said, jokingly.

Confronted by a sea of cameras, microphones and tape recorders, Rosenberg appeared uncomfortable talking to a pack of reporters Monday outside of the Manhattan Federal Courthouse.

"I've been under tremendous pressure," she said. "I don't like being in the limelight. I'm ready to go to the background where I belong and just be an artist."

After her first sketch went viral, Rosenberg — who claimed she didn't even know who Brady was before the Aug. 12 hearing — said she received more than 700 e-mails, many of them hateful, and several interview requests.

"I couldn't deal with all the media attention," she said. "I had a very rough time for a few days, and I got a lot of people sending me nasty e-mails. I can't figure out why they even bothered."

Rosenberg, who has been a sketch artist for 35 years, told the Boston Herald on Saturday that she was "terrified" about going through a similar ordeal this week.

"I'm concerned about facing another week of all this ridicule," she said. "I think it's going to be hard for me. I'm terrified about being under the microscope. I hate that. I'm not used to that."

In order to avoid a similar fate, Rosenberg has actually been drawing Brady at home in her New York apartment.

"I've had sleepless nights and Tom Brady's been in my mind in the middle of the night. I get up worrying about it," she told WBZ-TV in Boston on Sunday. "I don't like knowing people are really watching what I'm doing. I guess people do all the time, but I never think about it ever. But now I feel like everybody's commenting and they're really watching."

For all of our sakes, hopefully this long, national "Deflate-gate" nightmare will be over soon.