Pursuing portraits

I signed up for this class at the beggining of July. Painting faces is always somewhat scary. I enjoyed the class and learned few useful tips from Pam, which I think changed my faces for the better. At the beggining, she suggested parcticing portraits in graphite. I did a few but I do not like my black and white portraits too much. I find that they lack personality somehow. I prefer the painted ones. These are the first ones - painted on a spread in one of my journals hosted in a Reader's Digest atlas.