“What is the state-of-the-art in sketch recognition and what are some important future research directions in matching sketches with digital face images?” This opinion paper focuses on answering these questions through proposing three important steps that need to move the field forward: (i) create a large, real world forensic sketch database, (ii) develop fundamental understanding of human cognition of processing sketches, and (iii) develop improved algorithms for matching sketches with mugshot photos. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.