One thing I remember hearing about them is that if the person who is being interviewed says that they are able to help make a sketch, then they usually can, but if the person says they didn’t get a good look or they’re not sure if they could, they will ask them to try to do their best anyway, and these almost always come out horribly. So the moral is that if someone says they can, let them, but if they don’t think they can, then leave it at that and don’t try to make them do their best and give it a shot anyway, because they’ll fail.

Regarding the sketches: Yeah, the Unabomber one is horrible.

The one of David Berkowitz looks somewhat similar when next to each other, but it does not look enough that I’d recognize it if I knew someone who looked like him. He has a distinctive chin and so does the sketch, but distinctive in completely the wrong way. If they added more shadow to the chin, maybe. The sketch is pointy and his is very broad and strong.

The one of Gary Ridgeway does look a bit like him, but it looks very very generic, so it could be almost any white male. It looks a lot younger than him. I’d say that one is a failure.

These are definitely over-used, but I think sometimes it’s a temptation to try to use whatever they have, when they have very little. They’re trying to push the description as far as they can for lack of any other lead.

http://tyleryoungjj.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/ul_rapesuspectz.jpg

i can’t imagine that anyone LOOKS like this, and that anyone would even recognize the suspect. all it made me do was laugh out loud!!

        Q said:

To be fair shouldn’t you do with without a picture of any kind and try to do it from memory? I think even for an artist that would be difficult because it’s not just an issue of being able to draw or paint well but to recall the features from memory and produce it on demand. If it were easy to do then artists would not require models to pose.

The point here Q is that if I cannot do it from a picture such that it is recognizable to the people close to the subject, what does that say about anything I could do from memory, particularly if it was a stranger seen only for a few moments under possibly stressful conditions?

In fact I believe that after I told them who the subject of the sketch was any resemblance they say they saw was superimposed by their subconscious minds on the picture.

Working with my son’s 8X11 graduation picture, which is on the wall in my office about a meter away, I made a composite from the website that the Giant Pulsating Brain posted. After several hours of work, and when I was reasonably satisfied with the result, I mailed it to him, his sister, and my wife (his mother).

None of them could name the subject, the closest was my son himself who said it looked like a mix of several of his cousins. However once I told them who the subject was they could all see the resemblance.

My wife helpfully suggested that I not attempt to pursue a late career change to the Arts.

http://flashface.ctapt.de/

It’s only a basic one, but just try to make one of someone you know well and do it without a photograph to view. Do it just from memory. It’s really really hard!

I agree that the most useful descriptions would be traits that are not visual but are kinda binary in nature. Like a person either has a scar or doesn’t and they either have red hair or black hair. I guess you could make some distinctions there that there are times when dirty blond and light brown blend together or times when a dark skinned caucasion can look latino or arab but I mean in general, those are the ones that I’d consider more reliable, the ones that are not visual to remember but are a fixed variable.