Blood, Forensic Artists, & Jack Sparrow

Sidney slid an open binder to the woman sitting at the conference table opposite her. “I want you to look over these face shapes and select the closest to the one you recall the man having, okay?”

Page after page completed the catalog of various facial shapes, from oval and square to diamond. Sidney could expect the process to take a few minutes as Sheila studied each one.

“This one, I think.” She pointed with a hesitant finger.

“Triangular face shape.” Sidney confirmed and began forming an outline in light pencil strokes. “Okay. Now, if you turn to the section with eyes, we can fill in the face.”

Wide-set eyes, blue. Nose, short. Mouth, thin. The features came together to make an entire face, complete with a cleft chin and blond crew cut. It was apparent by the incessant wringing of her hands that the woman was growing more anxious with every question. Her work at suppressing the bad memories was crumbling brick by brick.

“It–it almost looks like… him, but the chin was more tapered,” she said once Sidney showed her the sketch. With a few more adjustments, Sidney applied the finishing touches to the graphite shadows using a tortillon and turned the clipboard around. 

Miss Albright turned ashen and wrenched at her hands. “Yes – yes! That’s him! It’s him!

(Safecracker Chapter 1)

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As a young lass, I can remember a Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl poster filling up the expanse of my sister’s wall, with every action in the room being performed under the perpetually sleepless eyes of Jack Sparrow, Will, and Elizabeth.

Yeah. I just dated myself with that one, I know.

The challenge of capturing their likenesses ignited my imagination, and for a change, I decided to stare at them, equipped with an HB pencil and printer paper. This favor was the least the threesome could give, as we had bestowed on them a place in our home with the comfort of heat in December and AC in the summer, and only rarely a hungry moth.

However poor that attempt turned out, it catapulted me onto the road of portrait drawing, which even today, holds my interest above most any other subject. I have honed the skill, though nothing remarkable. Unfortunately, nowadays, I find myself with little time to devote to full-fledged realism, compromising for smaller and less time-consuming sketches, if I draw at all.

But the creative juices still flow in my veins! And likely the graphite shavings still cling to the lining of my trachea, where the cilia have yet to hasten it to be sneezed out or otherwise swallowed.

*Cough*

Ah, forgive the over-technical physiology descriptions. The main character in my latest mystery WIP is studying for the medical field, meaning I am studying for the medical field.

Why do I get myself into these things???

For Sidney in my first novel, Safecracker (the one I am still trying to acquire an agent for), this was the reverse case. With her being a police sketch artist, it was easy for me to sow in the artistic themes running through the story, where her creative mind compares the things of her life to those on the canvas.

These elements came naturally, and the only research needed for this arena was for the forensic artist profession, a job I fancied I'd enjoy doing myself.

Who wouldn’t like the challenge of transforming someone’s verbal description into a realistic human facial composite?

But after a multitude of internet searches and partaking of some instructional videos, I found the job not so simple as interviewing witnesses and drawing criminals. The word forensic is used in the grimmest sense, involving things such as sketching crime scenes with precise dimensions of the area or room, age progression renderings, and actual reconstructions of a mutilated face or skull remains. 

Eww, right?

As much admiration as I have for those artists, I can't see it as a job description befitting my talents or strength of stomach in this case – which is similar to what Sidney tells her detective brother in the homicide department. She specializes in criminal composites based on witnesses' descriptions and refuses to venture into the bloodier side of things, saying she “doesn’t do blood.” 

Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?

Most police departments do not have a full-time forensic sketch artist and employ a capable officer on their staff in addition to his or her regular duties. Or, such as Sidney, there are freelancers with proper certification to assist the police in their investigations.

The depressing aspect for me was finding that they more often than not use digital renderings instead of sitting down with a traditional pencil and pad, as we are used to seeing on cop shows like Dragnet… that is, I am used to seeing.

Did I just let my old soul creep in there?

I hope I haven’t disillusioned you from your dream of becoming a forensic artist now.

But you can’t call research boring nor a writer’s life insipid. I can tell you how long a human can go without oxygen before they die of brain damage, what that parquet chevron-like pattern on wood floors is called (herringbone), or the strange, lesser-known fact that the stiffness of rigor mortis eventually wears off and the corpse becomes flexile again.

Do you think you'd have the guts to work a crime scene? Or, do you like to sketch or paint too?

I’d love to hear in the comments!

~Alissa