Career Post (#3)

For this quarter's career post I'm focusing on forensic artists. Forensic artists use their artistic abilities to do a variety of things in the realm of criminal justice. They make sketches of unidentified criminals based on witness statements and create models and evidence boards to be used in criminal proceedings. They also digitally enhance surveillance footage, reconstruct facial features to identify remains, and create age progressions of victims and perpetrators of crimes.

Usually jobs in this field require an associate's or bachelor's degree in art or graphic design, although degrees in criminal justice or computer science would also be very useful. Additionally, sketch artists should have a good technical understanding of proportion, anatomy, and some relevant computer programs. From what I've found, I don't think that a certification is strictly necessary to this career, but professional certification programs do exist for this and they're probably pretty helpful. One of the most widely recognized such certification programs is through the International Association for Identification. This is another career where there's not necessarily a specific major attached, but VCU is nearby and has a great arts program, and the University of Lynchburg is a Virginia school that has a solid criminal justice program, so either one could be good starting points to get into this field.

N.B.: I've opted not to attach a picture to this post, firstly because I didn't want to throw someone's art in here at the end when the post wasn't actually about that person, and secondly because a lot of the artwork from this field is of real, living people who either committed crimes or were the victims of crimes, so throwing that in at the end of my post would feel kind of disrespectful, I think.