Like most professionals in a particular field, I’m often amused, aghast, or horrified with the misrepresentation found in books and shows. Occasionally I’m thrilled. Most of the time mistakes are caused by an author’s sheer ignorance of my particular expertise—forensic art. Let’s face it, how many forensic artists do you know? Forensic art can cover a multitude of skills: composite drawings, crime scene sketches, facial reconstructions, age progressions, image enhancements, courtroom sketches, and demonstrative evidence to name a few. In order to keep you, the novelist, informed and you, the reader, aware, let me share some deep insight and truths into this fascinating world.
One of the more dramatic uses of a forensic art is facial reconstruction. The artist is usually portrayed placing clay over the skull of an unknown person for identification. The book, Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith, published in 1981, was one of the earlier references to skull reconstructions. The movie by the same name did a creditable job showing reconstructions, however, it included both the European and American process. The European model builds the face by re-creating the underlying muscles while the American technique uses tissue depth markers. The 1985 television show, MacGyver, had a facial reconstruction where the lead character cut the erasers off the ends of #2 pencils to create the tissue depth markers. Ahh…. close, but not quite. We do use erasers, but they are in strips and come out of electric or click erasers.
The best, most accurate, composite drawings come from an artist wielding a lowly pencil and paper. Though many departments use computer programs, the programs are only as good as the images loaded into them. The sketch takes anywhere from an hour and a half to four hours, depending on the witness and artist’s speed. We erase. A lot.
Courtroom artists are occasionally featured, such as in Brandilyn Collins’ Hidden Faces series. Courtroom artists are used when television cameras are banned from a particular trial. The images they create are purchased by television networks and/or newspapers. I found sketching in a courtroom to be by far the most difficult type of forensic art. For one thing, no one stands still or holds a pose for you. The prosecuting attorney will point an accusing finger at the defendant, then spin around to face the jury. Is it too much to ask for him to stay put for a moment? The jury needs to be sketched in, but the faces can’t be recognizable. The judge has to be handsome or beautiful, free from wrinkles, have lush hair, and look sincere. Believe me, those judges will check your work. As will both the prosecuting and defense attorneys. If you make the major players good looking enough, you can sell the originals to them after the television station films the work. You need to work quietly, which adds to the pressure you’ll have of sketching movement and improving on appearances. My favorite tool is a portable electric eraser. It sounds like a dentist’s drill. I can’t use it.
While I’m on a major whine-fest (I’d like to think of it as an exposé) on courtroom art, the artist has to sit in the gallery with the rest of the audience. That means we see the back of the defendant’s head. We have to hope they turn around at some point or wait until a break and they stand. Is it too much to ask to have a seat in the front?
The exciting part about being a forensic artist is that it provides endless ideas for novel plots—an angle I love to exploit. It’s the merging of art and science, and covers a case from initial investigation (composite sketch, crime scene diagram, facial reconstruction) to trial preparation (demonstrative evidence) to the trial itself (courtroom sketching). If I sketched a picture of the perfect career it would look like a forensic artist.
