Creative progress

What came out of my writing exercise was that I want to experiment with a simpler, more immediate, and less fiddly painting style. Quicker and more expressive. Less stressful. So I've been working on reducing the palate right down, painting in larger areas of flatness and with less tonal variation within shapes. I had thought to try zero tonal variation and simply have completely flat areas. But, I can't bring myself to do that yet. Maybe I'll have to build up to it. So for now, some light tonal work (e.g. under jaws, around eyes, etc.,...) remain. I have always enjoyed expressing myself with line and drawing, so this has come to the fore. Trying to find out how prominent (thick and black) to make the lines. I also wanted to develop a more stylised, almost cartoonish figurative style, rather than my usual more naturalistic approach to structuring faces. I'm reasonably pleased with my first two attempts. Although the drawn lines are a little heavy in places. I may try using a dark brown instead of black.