Page 1 of heads in different art styles

Sorry I ended up failing to post this yesterday, just wasn't up for it at the time of night I had left to write it in.

So there's things I'd like to change about my art style a little but I'm not really sure what to do with it. I suppose I feel that a lot of my drawings come out a bit too realistic but not done well enough to be interesting in that way. At least I feel that it's living in this somewhat boring space of being pretty but not interesting and engaging enough. 

I want to add more to my paintings and drawings, just push the mood I'm going for with a painting a little bit more. So that means making the stylised whimsical ones even more so. I do want to do realistic drawings still too but I want it to be one or the other, not this in between.

For these studies so far I've only been focusing on line work, just looking at all the different ways   people draw lip and hair for example, there's so many different ways of doing hair. Something I've been meaning to learn for a long time is using different line thickness, these studies have really helped with that. 

So a little about my thoughts on each study:

So the top left one was a study on Alex Aasen's art style.
To be honest this was probably the wrong time to do this study since I'm focusing on line work and a lot of the appeal in her paintings is not linework based, more painterly which doesn't work so well in pencil, maybe I'll do her again as a painting study...
Having said that looking back at this I really wasn’t paying attention to her style here. I think that was the last one I did that day. I work from right to left so I think this was the third one I did.

Anyway what I really love and was trying to convey was the contrast between the dark colourful messy hair and the pure white simple face underneath. I also really liked when she has colourful splatters coming out from around the eyes, I've seen a few people do similar things and though it doesn't seem to follow any realistic shading on the face it's very pretty, maybe it's a makeup technique, I donno.

Ice by AlexAasen (2016) Can be found here.

The top right study was based on Abigail Larson's art. 
I was somewhat tempted to go for something like this for a while but decided against it. I really like the straight lines but to be honest I think it makes the characters too gothic, having such straight lines as this feels a bit limiting for the sort of stuff I'd want to do. Having said that I think I will straighten out my lines a little bit.
I didn't include the drawn in check circles in my study because that's one of the few things I don't like about her style. The little upturned nose tip is cute though.
One thing I think I will take though that other artists and Abigail sometimes does, though not as strongly, is having the line on the underside of something be thicker to show it's in shadow...that I really like. A few of the artists in my studies have used it. Just changing line thickness in general is something I really like.

A Mother Most Macabre by AbigailLarson (2017) Can be found here.

The mid left was inspired by Chloe C, you can also find her amazing webcomic 'Headless Bliss' here too. Go check it out.
It was hard to find a good image of it since I know it mostly from her comic and not her Deviant Art but the way she does long hair is brilliant. I'm not too bothered about her character's faces, they're simple enough to be good for a web comic I guess, but there's not much I'd want to take from them.
However, I'd not even thought of doing hair like that unstill I did this study...It's not even trying to go downwards or form strands, it just loops about in this big soft pretty puffy mess. I've always tried to have the lines in a character's hair move towards the end of it and form points and clumps of strands, but this mostly ignores that...and is much more fun to draw.

Patreon postcard by chlove-art (2015) Can be found here.

The mid right was actually based on the art style for the game Darkest Dungeon, it's been one of my favourites to play for the last year now and I'd say second only to Sunless Sea for its atmosphere.
I've always loved the style you get with crime noir comics and Darkest Dungeon plays with that, having the solid black shadows but also using colour and a gentler blended lighting.
It does have the same problem that Abigail Larson's had in that as much as I love it I'd only be able to do a few different moods in it. Still I really want to play around with the crime noir style just not dedicate myself to it, maybe in the comic I'm working on...hmm...

Vestal by Red Hook Studios (2016) Can be found here.

The last one, the one at the botom is based on Doodlez Freaky's art.
I'll admit I'm slowly growing out of liking manga, and I really want my art style to move further away from it as well. Doodle Freaky’s faces are very manga like but again his way of doing hair is interesting...even if I went overboard in detail in my test drawing. It almost looks like the hair is melting in patches. It still has its classic pointy strands of manga but the more U like curves in it are interesting.
Again, the lines thicken in shadows though more suddenly and extremely in this case. They also thicken in some places where the hair forms Vs.

His curse... by Doodl3zfreaky (2012) Can be found here. 

If you couldn't tell I'm kind of working my way through the alphabet, though I'll have to go back and do some of the artists I love that aren't also on DeviantArt....it makes things easier if you just scroll through a list of people you’re watching and pick out of them.