What Are Forensic Artists & Sculptors?
Forensic artists like Karen T. Taylor and forensic sculptors like Frank Bender, who are both internationally known and respected, use their eyes and fingers to reconstruct ancient faces and to help murder victims tell their stories.
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Karen Taylor, Forensic Artist
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Forensic science includes the study of evidence discovered at a crime scene, which is usually presented in a court of law, and forensic artists and sculptors provide some of that evidence to help solve the crime. Karen T. Taylor has worked as a forensic artist at the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin and has earned numerous awards for her work. She is a consultant for the CBS crime drama "CSI" and has written several textbooks about forensic art.
Composite Art is Best Known
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Forensic art covers several disciplines, including composite art, after-death reconstruction and age progression. In composite art, the best known forensic art discipline, the artist creates a quality facial drawing based on descriptions from the victim of a crime. It is important for a forensic artist to have artistic skill, but the ability to successfully interview and relate to a victim or witness is equally important. For the portrait to be effective, the artist must gather, interpret and illustrate information from the victim.
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Computers and Mummies
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Sometimes forensic artists use computers to help draw pictures, and they use computer graphics to generate images of missing people and demonstrate how they age. Forensic artists may sketch a reconstruction of a crime scene from forensic information, or they may reconstruct historical figures like mummies. The Forensic Art Certification Board defines and explains the qualifications for a forensic artist and sculptor on its website.
Forensic Sculptor Uses Skull As Base
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Like forensic artists, forensic sculptors recreate what a person looked like when they died, how a young person aged or what someone centuries old might have looked like. Forensic sculpting takes a patient hand and an eye for details. It is useful in criminal investigation, medical teaching and in the archaeological field. The forensic sculptor uses the skull as a base to recreate a human face and has an intimate knowledge of the depth of skin tissue, how skin folds and sags at different ages and the exact proportions necessary to recreate a human face.
Frank Bender, Forensic Sculptor
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Frank Bender is a self-taught forensic sculptor who regards his criminal case work as his contribution to society. He illustrates the complexity of recreating the human face when he says that he never concentrates on just one area of the face, but uses his hands to feel how the entire composition of the face should be. Most forensic artists and sculptors do this.
Dedication and Empathy
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Some artistic skill and formal art training is necessary to be a forensic artist and a forensic sculptor, and some agencies offer specialized forensic art courses.Successful forensic artists and sculptors are dedicated and empathetic as well as talented. Both Frank Bender and Karen T. Taylor teach classes about their craft and they both create and exhibit work in the fine arts as well as forensic art.
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- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Hamed Saber
