Two Faces To Share - New Art + A Video

Hey everyone!
I haven't posted in nearly 2 weeks.. I didn't even feel the time going! Lately I have been doing a lot of sketching and some of those sketches I have turned into paintings.
Now, any of you who have been following me along my artistic journey for a while will probably know that I don't usually sketch out my work. As a matter of fact, sketching hasn't been a part of my art practice at all for a long time now but lately I feel like my creative direction has changed a little and I have been exploring sketching and painting people's faces, more specifically, women's faces.
It is something that I have wanted to try out for a long time now but for some reason I got it into my head that dreaded thought (that I'm sure a lot of artists will be familiar with) "you can't do that, your sketches are not good enough" or "you can do this kind of art no problem but not that kind of art" Does that make any sense?

Well, I don't really know what changed in me to make me feel comfortable with sketching faces but I think I just started off slowly sketching with the mindset that it was "only for me" and "no one is going to see it anyway"
But then once I started to sketch more and more, gradually filling up sketchbooks I realised that I CAN sketch and paint faces and my art IS valid and beautiful even if I am the only one who thinks so.


So, today I want to share with you a couple of new paintings I have done recently that are of women's faces.
They both started off as simple sketches in my sketchbook. I sketch almost daily now (I miss some days) and not all of my sketches work out, as a matter of fact a lot of my sketches are U-G-L-Y! But that is the beauty of it I find, I never know when one of the faces will turn out to be beautiful and to speak to me, letting me know that they have a story to tell .And these two faces did just that:

Both wear expressions that I felt held a story that needed to be told. So I developed these sketches into full, finished paintings.

What do you think? I love how they both turned out, I find it interesting how their expressions developed and changed throughout the painting process, in my opinion, further revealing their story to us.
You can see how these paintings started off in this video of me in my little old studio!



You can subscribe to my channel here to follow more of my art adventures!! Hope to see you over there and see you leaving some comments.
Speaking of comments, I'd love if you left me one here to let me know what you think of these two women paintings. I really enjoyed creating them and so would love to hear any feedback you have to offer.
Take care Ciara x