Despite facing the possibility of life in prison and enduring weeks of potentially damning testimony, Sean “Diddy” Combs is taking time during his racketeering and sex-trafficking trial to complain to the courtroom sketch artist about how she is drawing him.

After returning to the courtroom following a lunch break on Thursday, Mr. Combs turned toward the artist, Jane Rosenberg, and asked her to portray him differently.

“Soften me up a bit, you’re making me look like a koala bear,” Mr. Combs complained, according to Reuters. The New York Times described the conversation as animated and said he ended it by blowing her a kiss.

Ms. Rosenberg is a legendary sketch artist who has spent four decades providing images for various media outlets when cameras are not allowed in court. Mr. Combs is being tried in federal court, which does not allow photography.

Mr. Combs, who spent years on red carpets sporting flashy outfits and wearing plenty of bling, has appeared thinner, with graying hair and a gray beard, during his trial on five criminal counts. He has been held without bail at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Correctional Center since his September arrest.

A request to change her sketches is nothing new to Ms. Rosenberg, as other high-profile defendants also have appealed to her to make changes. She says Mayor Giuliani, who she has sketched as both a United States attorney and as a defendant in a civil case, complained to her that she made him look like his dog. 

A mafia boss, John Gotti, once interacted with Ms. Rosenberg while on trial. He asked her to slim down his chin.

During his father’s civil fraud trial in 2023, Donald Trump Jr., on his way to the witness stand, whispered to Ms. Rosenberg that she should make him look “sexy.”

Mr. Combs’s four-week trial is continuing on Friday with the questioning of more prosecution witnesses.

At one point on Thursday, the presiding district judge, Arun Subramanian, reprimanded Mr. Combs’s defense team after he nodded at the jury while a witness testified.

After the witness left the stand, the judge told the lead defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, “I saw your client looking at the jury and nodding vigorously. … That is absolutely unacceptable.” The judge warned he could bar Mr. Combs from the courtroom if he continued trying to interact with the jury.