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Digital Forensic
Art Techniques
 Digital Forensic
Art Techniques
A Professional’s Guide to Corel Painter•

Natalie Murry
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

© 2018 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works

Printed on acid-free paper

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-138-48601-0 (Hardback)

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-138-48602-7 (Paperback)
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-351-04716-6 (eBook)

This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources.
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and
publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of
their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material
reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this
form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write
and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.

Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
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Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Murry, Natalie, author.

Title: Digital forensic art techniques : a professional’s guide to Corel
Painter / Natalie Murry.
Description: Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017058836| ISBN 9781138486010 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138486027 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351047166 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Police artists. | Composite drawing. | Corel Painter. |
Computer art. | Forensic sciences.
Classification: LCC HV8073.4 .M87 2018 | DDC 363.250285/668--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058836

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

http://www.taylorandfrancis.com
and the CRC Press Web site at
http://www.crcpress.com
Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Author xi
Introduction xiii

Chapter 1: The Workspace 3

Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Workspace for a

Composite 27

Chapter 3: Composite Drawing 47

Drawing the Face 50

Chapter 4: Step-by-Step Composite Case 1 69

Chapter 5: Step-by-Step Composite Case 2 87

Chapter 6: Filing System, Case Log, and Court 101

Chapter 7: Skull and Muscle Anatomy 109

Chapter 8: Light on the Face 125

Chapter 9: Adding Tone 139

vi CONTENTS

Chapter 10: Adding Photographic Elements

to a Composite 167

Chapter 11: Postmortem Drawing 189

Chapter 12: 2-D Reconstruction 211

Chapter 13: Customizing Painter 235

Chapter 14: Conclusion 265

Index 271
Preface

American artists in law enforcement have been drawing

composites since the days of Wanted posters in the Old West.
Most of them learn to complete the drawings in pencil. In the
past few years, they’ve begun taking up the stylus and doing
the work digitally.

I’ve been doing forensic art since 2000, when I was trained
while working as a police officer in Kent, Washington. In my first
training class, the officer who sat next to me was Greg Bean
from the Bellevue Police Department. We kept in touch as our
departments were fairly close to each other and there weren’t
many artists in the Seattle area at that time. In 2010, we had both
been experimenting with graphic art software and thought it
could have applications to our forensic artwork. We started
sketching together on our Wacom tablets.

In 2011, Greg founded ID Forensic Art (IDFA), naming me as

vice president and lead artist. He ended up partnering with
LeadsOnline, a company who provides online services to police
agencies all over the United States. The concept for IDFA was
to provide police agencies around the country with access to
a forensic artist. We conduct our interviews with victims and
witnesses online. They can see us via webcam, and we can share
our Wacom monitors with them in real time for them to direct
the drawing process. Many police agencies we have worked
with have never had a local artist before, so the process has
been rewarding for us. We’re able to do the drawing within
hours of the crime and email the sketch to the detectives for
release to the media on the same day.
viii P R E fac E

After months of drawing digitally full time to get ready to go

live with the business, Greg and I were very comfortable with
working on the tablets. When I met other forensic artists at
conferences and training, many expressed an interest in learning
how to draw digitally as well. I put together a few weeklong
workshops and started teaching other forensic artists in police
agencies around the country.

When I taught digital composites, I included a handout of 28

pages for the artists to take home and refer to later, to remind
them of what they’d learned in class. For the past few years—
since I’ve stopped teaching regularly—I’ve had artists contact
me through my website—www.nataliemurry.com—to ask
where they can learn to draw composites digitally. I looked
online and was surprised to see that I couldn’t find anyone
else teaching the subject and that there didn’t appear to be
any books available on it. I revisited my handout and decided
it needed a lot more detail to be stand-alone instructions
without an in-person workshop. This book is the result of my
intention to provide instruction to law enforcement artists
who are interested in trying digital methods and fine artists
interested in how forensic artists work and how to draw faces
digitally.

Drawing digitally is like using any tool in art: a pencil, a charcoal

stick, a Conté crayon. A stylus is just another tool to master.
Digital work is easier for artists to send to the case detective,
and the work always reproduces exactly as it was completed.
It’s also fun. Corel Painter is a huge graphic art software
program, and you’ll find the brushes that mimic natural media
enjoyable for your fine artwork. There are many brushes that
look like watercolors, oil colors, thick paints, charcoals, pencils,
airbrushes, and several more. If you love drawing and painting,
it’s like a whole new world of toys to play with.

I hope learning to use this software is helpful for your forensic

artwork, but is also fun and inspiring for your fine artwork.
Acknowledgments

Thank you to Dr. Daniel Westcott and the Forensic Anthropology

Center at Texas State University (FACTS) for the use of the images
in Chapter 11. Additionally, thank you to the individuals and
families who donate their bodies and photographs to FACTS
for research. The opportunities for learning supported with your
donations extend beyond the anthropology field. The ability for
forensic artists to also learn from this collection is appreciated.
The forensic art field is heavily experience based, and working
with these images furthers our knowledge to better assist law
enforcement and medical examiners in attempting to portray
persons in unidentified remains cases. What we learn from this
collection can help ease the grief of family members who had
been unaware of the fate of their loved one.

Thank you to Small Town Noir for use of the historical booking
photos in Chapters 4 and 5.

Thank you to Wixphoto at Freerange Stock for the use of the

photo, “A Casual Man,” in Chapter 12.

Although reasonable effort has been made to ensure the

accuracy of information provided in this publication, the author
makes no representations regarding such accuracy. All opinions
expressed are those of the author; readers should use their own
judgment regarding their use of the content. The author is not
liable for readers’ reliance on any content.
Author

Natalie Murry is a freelance forensic artist currently based in

Austin, Texas. She began her forensic art career while working
as a police officer in Kent, Washington. She does reconstructions
and postmortem drawings for the King County Medical
Examiner’s Office in Seattle, Washington, and draws composites
remotely online as half of ID Forensic Art (IDFA) for LeadsOnline.
All of her forensic artwork has been digital since 2011. She has
taught forensic artists to draw digitally at workshops at police
departments from Washington to New Jersey as well as at
Scottsdale Artists’ School and at the Forensic Anthropology
Center at Texas State University.

Murry is on the Forensic Art Subcommittee for the International

Association for Identification, and is a Certified Forensic
Artist. She had an article published in the Journal of Forensic
Identification in September/October 2015 entitled “Rotating the
Anterior View of a Skull into the Frankfort Horizontal Plane for
Postmortem Drawings.”

She has been a beta tester for Corel Painter since the 2016 build.

Her work can be seen on her website: www.nataliemurry.com,

on Behance, and on Facebook as NatalieMurryForensicArt and
IDForensicArt, respectively.
Introduction

This book is intended to show you the techniques I use for

doing composites and other forensic art for law enforcement
purposes. I will give you an introduction to Corel Painter
software and show you the parts of the software you’ll need
to be familiar with in order to do composites, but Painter is
a huge program and there’s much more to it that I’m not
going to get into here. There’s a lot more for you to discover
about it on your own. Once you learn the basic tools for
composites, you may want to pick up new tools and tricks
here and there from other artists, YouTube, Corel’s website
tutorials, or the Painter manual. You may find a quicker way
to do one thing or a technique for doing something else. This
book will give you a base to start from. You can take off from
there on your own.

It is understood that you will need a digital drawing tablet to

be able to get the most out of your drawing software. Trying to
draw using a mouse and watching your results on your monitor
is awkward and not as intuitive as drawing with a stylus directly
on a tablet as though you were sketching on paper. With a
tablet, you see your marks beneath your stylus as you make
them. The tool you’re using is digital, but it’s just a new art tool
to learn. A pencil, a charcoal vine stick, a conté crayon, a digital
stylus. If you like to draw, it’s one more fun thing to play with.
Getting to do this for work is a bonus.
xiv INTROdUcTiON

The brand of tablet I use is Wacom, the model is Cintiq. Wacom

is widely considered top of its field and I’ve always had a great
working relationship with their people. There are other brands
but I’ve not tried them and can offer no opinion on their quality
(Figure I.1).

Figure I.1 My first 12-inch Cintiq, and my 22-inch Cintiq on a rolling stand.

There are many different graphic art software programs.

I prefer to work with Corel Painter. I think their program
works very well for our drawing-based work. Many graphics
software programs work similarly, so having familiarity with
one should make learning another somewhat easier. If you’re
working with a different program while going through this
book, many of the tools will be the same. You may not have
blenders or brushes that give the same effect as what I’m
showing but you should be able to approximate the results
or perhaps find something that works better for you in your
software.

One benefit to Corel Painter is that you can purchase one copy
of the software and it works for both Mac and Windows. I
have Windows for my home computer and Mac for my laptop.
Graphics software is expensive, and it’s great to be able to use
the same disc for both platforms.
 INTROdUcTiON xv

There is one thing that you need to do to set up the Wacom

tablet to work on a Mac that you don’t need to do with a
Windows-based system. Plug your Wacom tablet in to your
Mac, and then open System Preferences (Figure I.2).

Figure I.2 Mac System Preferences.

xvi INTROdUcTiON

Go to Displays (Figure I.3).

Figure I.3 Display window.

On the top line are tabs for Display, Arrangement, and Color.
Click on the “Arrangement” tab (Figure I.4).

Figure I.4 Arrangement window.

 INTROdUcTiON xvii

Notice the illustration in the center of the window. It shows two

blue boxes. The large box represents your primary monitor, the
small box is your Wacom screen. There is a white bar on top of
the large box. With your stylus, grab the white bar, pick it up, and
move it to the top of the small box. The screen on your monitor will
change, and all of your icons will move over to the Wacom screen
(Figure I.5).

Figure I.5 Selecting the secondary (Wacom) monitor.

You can then “X” out of the display window and open Corel
Painter. When you are done drawing, you’ll need to go back and
make your Mac monitor your primary display again.
xviii INTROdUcTiON

I don’t particularly like how Mac doesn’t give you a background

on your workspace in Painter (see Figure I.6).

Figure I.6 Mac Painter workspace shows my desktop underneath the palettes.

I find this distracting. It can be changed when you start opening

your images. There are a couple of different ways of working
and having your images display on the workspace. Painter calls
them the default and the single document view. The toggle
to switch between views is the bottom button on the toolbox
(Figure I.7).

The default views for Mac and Windows workspaces look like
the following images (Figures I.8 and I.9).

Figure I.7 Document view

toggle.
 INTROdUcTiON xix

Figure I.8 Mac default view.

Figure I.9 Windows default view.

xx INTROdUcTiON

When you’re working on an image in this view on Mac, if you

happen to click on the workspace instead of on your image,
Painter minimizes and you’re back with your Mac desktop. You’ll
need to click on the Painter icon to your Painter workspace back
up again.

Windows has a gray background in place that Mac doesn’t have.

You can get that background for Mac by clicking the toggle view
on the toolbox. This will bring up the single document view for
both workspaces (Figures I.10 and I.11).

Figure I.10 Mac single document view.

 INTROdUcTiON xxi

Figure I.11 Windows single document view.

Notice in this view, the other images you may have been working
with are no longer visible. To access those again, you need to
toggle back to the default view. As indicated by the name,
you can only have one image visible at a time with the single
document view. You can also see that the image doesn’t have
a frame around it as it does in the default view. You can’t pick
it up and move it around the workspace. You can zoom in and
out on the image and move around on it using the navigator,
but when you zoom out to view the full image, it will always go
to the center of the workspace.

Corel has a “Get Started Guide” online where you can learn the
basic techniques for the program:

http://product.corel.com/help/Painter/540213829/Main/EN/
Quick-Start-Guide/Corel-Painter-2018-Quick-Start-Guide.pdf

They also have a full manual that you can read online or
download.
xxii INTROdUcTiON

You can Google any questions you have about the software
(Example: How do I make a custom palette in Painter 2018?).
Corel also has a website at www.painterfactory.com where you
can post questions if you’re having a problem. Their developers
monitor that site and watch for suggestions for improvements
to the software and any bugs people have discovered.

This book is for working forensic artists who already have a

workflow in place for their composites and other drawings.
I won’t cover how to interview or discuss memory or signs of
deception. I don’t go into police procedure or evidence handling.
These subjects are for beginning forensic artists and are covered
already in other forensic art books. There is no need to reiterate
what is already written. I will talk about light and shadow, and
how to see things as an artist in order to improve your drawing
skills. I find that one can never have enough art instruction. You
may have taken several workshops about portraiture, but it
could be one instructor’s describing how to draw a profile that
suddenly makes sense to you and lets you learn from it.

There are benefits to working digitally. I do digital composites

remotely. I videoconference with a witness online. When the
interview is done, I can immediately email the sketch to the
detective. This enables police departments who have never
had access to a forensic artist to have an artist on call and to
have a sketch done at any time. They don’t need to wait for the
artist to travel to their location and the sketch is digital, meaning
it reproduces exactly as the artist drew it instead of getting
washed out from poor quality scanners.

If you’re a working forensic artist and you’re interested in trying

out digital methods, try going to an International Association
for Identification (IAI) conference. I go into more detail about
the IAI in Chapter 6. The forensic art branch of the IAI has several
artists who work digitally and who could demonstrate their
equipment. You might find demos at other police conferences,
or look up other artists on LinkedIn and see if they’re willing to
 INTROdUcTiON xxiii

help you out. You can contact me through my website, www.

nataliemurry.com. I’d be happy to do what I can for you as well.

I am not a doctor or a forensic anthropologist. Anatomy is not

my area of expertise. The information about skulls and muscles
in Chapter 7 is what I have learned from forensic art training
over many years and from input from my generous friend Dr.
Katherine Taylor at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office
in Seattle. Any errors that follow are mine.

Google, Corel, Windows, Mac (and any other trademarks) are

trademarks belonging to their respective owners, none of which
have endorsed this publication. Although reasonable effort has
been made to ensure the accuracy of information provided in
this publication, the author makes no representations regarding
such accuracy. All opinions expressed are those of the author;
readers should use their own judgment regarding their use of
the content. The author is not liable for readers’ reliance on any
content.
1
 CHAPTER 1

The Workspace

Figure 1.1 Painter workspace.

There’s a lot going on with this workspace, especially if you’re

not familiar with graphics programs (Figure 1.1). You can
completely customize your workspace to have the setup you use
most often in a layout that works best for you, and remove the
sections that you don’t use at all. Further along in this manual,
you may notice my workspace layout changing. Sometimes I
have different palettes open and other times I close them. I’ll
show you how to move the pieces around so that you can find
a layout that you like as well.
4 D i G i T a L F O R E N S ic A R T T E c H N i Q U E S

We’ll take this in sections. First, the menu bar across the top
(Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Menu bar, brush selector, and property bar.

This should be familiar from just about every other program you
use on the computer: The file menu, edit menu, and others. Each
choice has a pulldown menu that is revealed when you click on
the name. Some of the menus have additional submenus under
them as well. Figure 1.3 shows the “Effects” pulldown menu with
submenus.

Figure 1.3 Effects menu and submenu.

In this case, I touched the Effects menu with my stylus, then

moved my curser down to the Tonal Control choice, which
opened up a submenu to the side for different choices in
which to make tonal controls. Any choice on the menu list that
has a black arrow on the right has a submenu of additional
controls.

Underneath the familiar main menu is a bar divided into two

parts: The brush selector bar on the left followed by a dark gray
divider and the property bar on the right (Figure 1.4).
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