How do you draw portraits ?

This is how I usually do it, again, this is very general

pick a muted background first, here’s what my value range would be (although I’d recommend something you can see your sketch in, try not to go too dark)

then you can sketch out/line out on a separate layer what you might want your portrait to be

slap in skin tone layer

at this point if i’m happy with it, I’ll group these layers and make a copy of the grouped layers

——- add and adjust initial sketch, paint over, adjust layer setting, use more reference from portraits. For me, the initial sketch is just an idea of where I should place features, so I don’t usually go back and check my sketches. ——-

because my finals totally don’t look like the initial sketch anyway