Jan Of The Yard Draws On His Skills

The artistic talent of Jan Szymczuk first showed itself in childhood pencil sketches of tanks and soldiers but, as he told STEWART BONNEY, he honed his drawing skills in a special job where his remarkable ability helped bring criminals to justice.

HIS children found it hard to believe that Dad really was a policeman. He didn’t wear a uni- form, he had long hair tied back in a pony tail and apparently just spent every day drawing pictures.

But Jan Szymczuk wasn’t spinning them a yarn. After completing an art college course, he had joined the Metropolitan Police Force hoping to become a dog handler but as a young bobby on the beat in central London a bank robbery moved his working life in an unexpected direction.

“I was the first policeman on the scene,” he recalled, “and spoke to a woman witness who had seen one of the suspects. When the Flying Squad burst through the doors, I offered to interview her and try to draw the face she had seen. They weren’t very interested and told me to sit in a corner out of their way but when they saw the face I drew, they said: ‘that’s whatsisname – he’s a well-known criminal’.”

That brush with fate launched Jan on a career which saw him rise to become the senior police artist for New Scotland Yard, a role which closely involved him in many major cases including the Yorkshire Ripper murders and the IRA London bombings.

“I had to talk to witnesses or the victims of crime and draw something that was in their head – a face they might only have seen for an instant or in a stressful situation with a gun pointed at them,” he said. “In trials where there was a Not Guilty plea my work was part of the evidence, so it had to be detailed and accurate. I couldn’t let my abilities as an artist influence the outcome.

“I also had to work quickly to get an accurate image on computer as soon as possible. At most I would have a two to four-hour cognitive interview with the witness to complete a photo-Fit/E-Fit image which might be used on Crimewatch or TV news programmes.”

Aware that his colleagues had difficulty with his tongue-twisting surname (it seems that Szymczuk should be pronounced ‘Shimshook’), Jan – a frequent visitor to all the main London police stations became universally known as ‘Boris’ and soon found there was a growing off-duty demand for his humorous caricatures and cartoons of colleagues as well as portraits of families and even police horses.

As his 50th birthday drew closer, and the day when he could retire after 30 years’ police service, Jan – whose Polish parents, Edward and Gabriella, had settled in Pegswood after the Second World War – and his Morpeth-born wife, Brenda, had only one dream: to return to their native Northumberland.

They bought a house which overlooked open fields at Stannington that was large enough for themselves and their six children, and had outdoor kennel space for Jan’s three Siberian huskies, leaving Jan to spend his last three working years commuting weekly to London.

On every train journey Jan whiled away the time filling sketch books with detailed pencil drawings of his dogs and planning a new career as a “proper artist”, and when he did retire two years ago he enthusiastically launched himself into a new life.

He began displaying some of his work, incredibly detailed pencil drawings of dogs and horses and portraits of friends, at Stannington Nursery and a pet shop and a tearoom in Morpeth, and commissions soon began flowing in.

To achieve his amazingly realistic images, Jan first takes 30 to 40 photographs, closely studies all the images, selects the best, then spends up to 10 hours painstakingly drawing his subject.

His work is so much in demand that his plan to convert a garage in his garden into a permanent studio remains on hold. His temporary studio, in an upstairs bedroom, is overflowing with completed drawings and work in progress.

Jan said: “I suppose you could say that I’m a traditionalist. I draw what I see and pencil is still my favourite medium because it allows me to achieve a high degree of detail in my sketches. I only have 10 pencils: some mechanical ones with different thicknesses and a few hard pencils for high tones.

“But just using one 2B pencil I can go as light or as dark as I want and draw things as delicate as a bubble on a tongue or a fine whisker. It’s an old-fashioned way of drawing, but I don’t find it difficult because it’s what I’ve been doing for years. My work just boils down to observation and patience. It’s slow but it works and it’s how the old masters did it.”

During his police career, Jan did not have the time to try his hand at what he calls “proper painting” so in the past year he set about learning how to use acrylic paint, watercolour, chalk and pastels. He also tried his hand at landscape painting by signing up for tuition at the Coquetdale Arts Centre in Rothbury and joining the White Swan Centre art club in Killingworth.

But as soon as his fellow artists discovered his remarkable drawing ability, he was persuaded to start giving weekly classes to show others how to acquire similar skills. He said: “I enjoy trying to teach people some of the things I have learned over the years.

“Anyone can learn basic drawing skills. I just give them a piece of paper and a pencil and show them how to hold a pencil the right way and how, by using just one pencil with varying degrees of pressure, you can produce eight different shades between dark and light. People find they can do things they never thought possible.”

Using black-and-white photographs of old film stars and a basic face grid outline, Jan is able to show absolute beginners how to draw a recognisable portrait in less than an hour, and he recently amazed one of his classes by showing them a simple step-by-step process to draw an elephant.

While Jan’s painting skills are already much admired, his passion for drawing is undiminished. “Some people ask what the point is of drawing a person or an animal when you have a photograph,” he said. “But I think there is so much more for the eye to see in a drawing, and it’s really satisfying to produce something of quality with your own hands in pencil or paint.

“If I want to draw or paint lions and tigers I have to work from a photograph unless I go to Africa. But one animal here in Northumberland that I really would like to draw is a shire horse. If there is an owner who would like a drawing of their horse I’d love to hear from them.”

To see more of Jan’s work, or to order a copy of his newly-published book ‘Pencil and Paint’, (Softback), £23.95 go to www.szymczuk.co.uk