drawing i nspiration
under stress is the suspect’s eyes – so
I try to work mostly on that feature.
For this drawing, I asked my wife to
describe someone who I did not know.
The first step when I attend a crime
scene is to talk to the victim. I try
to get them to calm down, and take
them to a quiet room away from the
scene. If I do not do this, the victim
will start describing people at the
scene – and not the suspect. I show
them my rough drawings to prompt
their thought processes. I begin with
the aspect of the face they remember
most, and I work from there.
This takes about an hour. The
drawing, together with information
about the suspect, aids the
investigation. I add as much detail to
the description as I can – things like
any scars, tattoos, earrings or any
hair on the suspect’s face. I try not
to actually illustrate the hair because
that will sometimes divert a viewer’s
attention away from important facialfeatures. This is not a process of
making a person’s portrait; it is done
solely from the victim’s memory.
I have also included a diagram of
a crime scene. This accompanies the
police photographs because we cannot
write information on the photographs.
I use such a diagram to show the
placement of evidence and the locations
of items; and for measurements. This is
just a basic drawing of the crime scene,
to serve as a backup for the photography- but it is very important. When
attempting to describe a crime scene to
a jury of people who were not there, a
diagram like this is enormously helpful.
Processing a crime scene is a very
long process. When I work on a crime
scene and also do the drawing, it can
take a very long time ... sometimes
up to eight or ten hours per scene.
All of these drawings were
done with Derivan Liquid
Pencil (in all shades) and a HB
pencil, on Bristol paper. n