Drawing
I started drawing from references around age 9, following tutorials of how to draw animals on youtube. I didn't start using colored pencils to draw realism portraits until I was 16. Below are some of my drawings.
December 2019
August 2020
May 2020
March 2020
March 2020
May 2020
September 2020
Drawing portraits with colored pencils is really just a matter of shading and shapes. Once I have the shape of the subject, I just fill in the empty space with shapes (following the reference of course) and it ends up looking very close to the original picture in most cases.
Undertones are very important in drawing with color, and with any medium in fact. The difference between a portrait looking dead and flat rather than alive and real, is very dependent on the correct undertone.