100 Heads Challenge Day 5: Mugshots!

[thagandizzle]

Today's theme was suggested by my wife and, for lack of anything better, I went with it. I ended up feeling a little weird about the image selection process. It's different when they're not models or friends who have volunteered. These people were forced to be photographed as part of the arrest process, you know?

So, I was kind of picky about sourcing the images and tried to stay away from people who had been arrested for things like drug possession or prostitution--both because I have Opinions about those issues and because I feel like they are grayer areas than a lot of other potential crimes. Most of the people I drew were convicted of stabbing. I found a local newspaper website from a smallish city in Illinois that archives all of the mugshots every month from local arrests, so it's a pretty well-documented set of source images.

I definitely tried to pick interesting faces, but it was more important to me to be thoughtful about the fact that I am drawing images of real human people who didn't volunteer for their faces to be displayed online. All that said, shocked mullet man in the bottom right was my favorite. He looks SO SHOCKED that he was arrested for stabbing his stepmom!


Click to enlarge:

Comments

Re: faces

[thagandizzle]

It's true! I'd be ok with a Medium Place of my own. it's not that much different from normal life, you know? Like, I definitely have been burning through old episodes of Martha Stewart Living as background noise while I do these drawings and if that's not a Medium Place-ass show, I don't know what is.