Exercise 3 - Portrait from memory or the imagination

I started drawing rather stiffly, the top two faces look like identikit criminals!

They get a bit looser as I go along

Then I decided I needed to use something other than pencil.

My problem is that I'm making the face up on the paper, doing some squiggles and letting them turn into a face. Is this cheating? I think should be imagining or seeing the person and then drawing them. Back to the drawing board...

I drew some people I knew from memory and this lead to drawing a lady I know who is very distressed at the moment.

It's strange how scanning a drawing picks up it's faults. I had to go back and adjust the nose.

It's not a great drawing and it's not much of a likeness but at the risk of making sweeping assumptions I think it conveys the way I think she feels at the moment. That's probably more important than a likeness, but to who? me drawing? friends looking at the picture? or the subject herself who may hate me for exposing her feelings, even anonymously on a blog. 

Probably good portraits are not always nice or accurate pictures and won't make the subject happy or comfortable. That makes me wonder why we do portraits? Maybe as a record of a universal feeling for future viewers. Cezanne's drawing of his wife makes me feel calm and peaceful. Tracey Emin's Self Portrait as a small bird is light and playful and would cheer me up if I had it on a wall. 

Zinaida Serebriakova's paintings and drawings make me wonder about the people she portrays, who were they what were they thinking? what happened next?

I feel a link to my grandmother through a painting I did of her so is the importance for me the act of making the painting or having the painting to remind me of her?