“I’m in college and want to be a Forensic Artist. What about me?”

At this point, you can start targeting your career more, as to what type of forensic art you want to do. If you are mainly interested in doing composite sketches, then figure out what job you would like in Law Enforcement (LE), and go towards that. Patrol officer, crime scene tech, fingerprint expert, footwear examiner…there are many, many jobs in LE that give you the main career to fall back on. And these jobs will put you in the environment where you will be able to be called out to do composite sketches.

Let’s say you are a crime scene tech, and you get called out. There has been a homicide, you are collecting the evidence, and it turns out there is a witness who saw the suspect. You are right there, the detective probably knows you….you can offer to do a composite sketch with the witness. Of course, you have to perform your primary function first, but you are there, you know the people that can put you in touch with the witness to do a drawing.

Even if you’re not on the scene, say you work as a footwear examiner in a laboratory, you still could have the opportunity to go out and do a sketch. Because: you work at the agency, you either know the detective or someone else that knows them, so you are there. By networking, and doing your primary job well, you are in the prime area to do a composite sketch if needed.

If you are more interested in the facial reconstruction side of forensic art, working towards the medical examiner, or anthropology side of things would help put you where you need to be. Again, the facial reconstruction will likely not be your full-time function, but you could still do it when it’s needed.

Think about the logic (and I don’t mean to be crass here); what do you need first in order to do a facial reconstruction? An unidentified person. Where will those people be? At the morgue. Who works at a morgue? Well, I think you get the idea…

You have to be where the work is. If you work at a small law enforcement agency in a great part of town with hardly any crime, then you will probably not get called out on many composites. Why? Because they simply aren’t needed. Facial reconstructions probably wouldn’t be needed much either.

I’ll say it over and over again until you are probably sick of hearing it, but you need to be where the work is. And it’s in Law Enforcement.