I've avoided portraits/figure painting for years - probably because I'm so intimidated by it. People have their idea of what a person should look like and when I paint them, I paint them as I see them, not as someone else does; so it can be a tricky thing to do.
But as an artist, I want to push myself. So... I decided to offer 14x14 portraits in black and white for the first 5 people to message me for a discounted price - to help me learn. I never could have imagined how many people would be interested. I honestly, couldn't keep up. Since offering the portraits at a discounted price I ended up increasing my prices but still couldn't keep up with the demand. It was cray-cray folks. I was painting my little butt off.
UPDATE: As I continued to paint, I thought I would get faster the more paintings I completed but I was surprised to find out that the more I did, the longer they took because I began to learn new things and got pickier and pickier. Since offering the portraits online back in September, I painted over 80 portraits. I painted couples, singles, models, idols, and even dogs. It's been awesome and I continue to offer custom portraits for special and unique gift ideas or just because.
If you're interested shoot me an email.