Color portrait drawing practice on plaster head

by Liz Cook

Published May 22, 2026

Source

Liz Cook

7 pieces

Liz Cook Page

Nobody starts out good at color portraits!

When I was little I started with mix and match How to Draw A Character books. This was just tracing different eyes or hair to make the character I wanted.

I also had a bunch of just how to draw books that were super basic like draw a circle and then add this line and this till you've drawn the whole thing.

Then I sight drew comic book characters I loved. Gen 13 by J. Scott Campbell @jscottcampbellart and Fathom by Michael Turner were my favs. And by now it's high-school and I'm drawing some black and gray graphite portraits but still not really into full on color portraits yet.

Then in college I finally started painting color portraits. But I seriously had to do a lot of work on understanding lighting and form.

So by the time I started tattooing color portraits, I had a lot to lean on that I had intuitively built up. So then I started obsessing about ink.

Point is, I never started good and the education continues and I'm fine with that because I love art and tattoos.

Wonder what the next obsession is gonna be?