I'm Hollie. I draw faces until they look back.

I took art at GCSE and then A level, and spent most of it learning what I didn't want: set subjects, set timing, marks for doing it the approved way.

It nearly put me off for good. I finished the exams, put the pencils down for a while, and only came back to it once nobody was grading the result. Everything here is made on my own terms — my subjects, my pace, my brief.

I have no art school behind me — just years of evening practice, a lot of ruined paper, and friends who kept asking for portraits until I stopped calling it a hobby. The animal pieces came first. Then someone asked for their grandmother, and then a face from a film, and the two strands of the work grew side by side.

Almost everything is drawn on toned paper. It gives the whole piece a temperature before I've made a single mark, and it means I can leave the light alone rather than chasing it with white. Most of these drawings are one continuous sitting of three or four hours, plus a slow second pass the next evening once I've stopped being pleased with myself.

I keep the work affordable on purpose. Prints sit between £20 and £48 so the drawings can live in normal houses, and originals are priced for people buying their first piece of original art rather than their tenth.