I don’t understand how police sketch artists are so accurate from a person’s description. To be honest, I feel like I couldn’t adequately describe my best friend’s physical appearance well enough for a sketch artist to draw it.
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You don’t have to describe it perfectly all at once. Typically the sketch artist will show the witness a bunch of options for noses, eyes, mouths, etc. and put them together into a composite sketch – in the old days, that would be done by hand, nowadays it’s often done with computers.
Then the witness will look at the composite and will likely say something like “actually, the nose is a little bigger than that,” or “no, his eyebrows aren’t quite right,” and they’ll modify it as necessary.
So even if you couldn’t describe your best friend well enough to get a perfect sketch, with a couple of adjustments as you go, you’ll likely end up with a fairly close likeness of your friend by the time the process is over. Same goes with police sketches – in some cases, they can get scarily accurate.
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