face study

I love faces. I really look at people and their faces. I am aware of my drawing limitations but have decided to embrace my style.
There is always more to learn but right now I will just allow myself to draw, paint, and play to encourage that part of me. The very fact that these are flawed is why I am sharing them with you instead of hiding them away in a file, or the circular file. I am exhibiting courage in showing what I made!

These are the materials I used today. Paintsticks, pencils, embossing sheets and some muslin precut squares left over from some long forgotten project.
Don't know exactly what I thought I'd make today, but on my walk I thought, what if instead of gray, my hair came in purple! How cool!
So I thought I would sketch a woman with purple hair.

That turned out to be the bottom one, and she looks downright scarey. Whatever. As these things go, the whole project grew into a bunch of attempts . First the ones I like best...

She looks like me in my youth. Sweet. Full of promise. I love this one and it was the quickest to make. It was also the last one I made, which might say a person needs to warm up. Another lesson here is if the first item comes out all wrong like my scarey woman, keep going.

I like her a lot. She kind of looks like I feel nowadays. I don't have purple hair but I might. I love the thoughtful way she is. She is open too, and content. I like her a lot.

Next I like the wild abandon she shows! That's kind of like me too! Her hair is blowing freely in the wind, she's laughing, she's looking ahead!

I wanted to try a blue face but she looks haggard. Her eyes aren't shaped right, but she was the second one I sketched. I don't mind some aspects of it, like her ear showing. I might even like that haircut and blue isn't a bad hair color. I like the dark eyes with the white highlight. Paintsticks with no points are a challenge to use on fabric. They grab hold of the fiber and don't mix or move or blend easily. I rubbed some blue on my finger and smeared it on her face to shadow her a bit. There are three shades of blue on her.
I am not even showing the scarey one again.
Lessons learned:
1. Just do it, don't wait til you are good enough or take a class or have confidence
2. Accept your limitations and call it a style
3. Keep going, the last one will probably be your favorite, as mine was
4. Share your process with others like me, so they will know they aren't the only non-perfect artists
5. There is beauty in non- perfection
LeeAnna