Motivation for painting a portrait

Heres portrait of YOG SOTHOTH, ( friend of mine). He has features that are probably not, in most cases, co.nsidered beautiful

OK - YOG SOTHOTH is a fictional cosmic entity in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle and the motivation for the portrait is to give the reader a better visual impression of what they are reading about so that all makes logical sense.
I am talking about a classical portrait of a person. Most of the great classics are portraits of real people who are or were living at some time. Although the exact identity of the Mona Lisa is not known, her identity is always speculated.
However I have come across portraits of totally fictional people e.g. beautiful women.
Is the motivation here perhaps to pay homage to the beauty of the female face ?
Your thoughts ?

IMHO one does art to convey emotion. Whether a real person or in ones mind the idea for me is to 'move' myself or others to feel something when viewing the piece. On occasion I have been at a gallery or museum and a piece does nothing for me. That just means I am not moved. Others might be. I do my art for myself. To release anger, love, fear etc. If others don't feel it, that's fine. I tend to brood a bit before I create. My main motivation seems to come from repressed feelings. My art releases those feelings.

Bluntly, fella...
Paint whatever you like, how and who you like - If others dislike it...... so fckn what...?
Art is about expressing YOUR ideals, not appeasing others or securing financial incentives.
Davinci gave not a toss - And He was awesome!!!

When I get an order for a portrait, I just have to do it. And I like that a picture turns out more beautiful than in reality. Although it can be difficult obtain identity.

About the only reason I paint a portrait is by commission, and I absolutely insist upon taking my own reference photos. I also paint them to offer as gifts to people whom I love, or admire.

I don't know how to post a photo on this site, or I would have posted an example of my work.

I did caricatures years ago. It was fun. I did em in the style of Nast ,(more detail and I made people look a bit sinister).

SOmetims I did portraits and I found the neatest thing for me was to maintain an "attitude" in my subject. Women are easy. Kids too. Men are tough because I see so many attitudes that can arise from facial tics .
Try doing old folks first, they are probably the easiest because everything is laid out foir you to see.

Look to do different kinds of support features (like tattoos, uniforms or some kind of weird hat and maybe even a snack or a drink).
I liked to use black and indigo or black and hookers backgrounds with highlights from behind (very freaky)

I used to project my subject onto a working sketch and then start mssing with the secondary stuff (here to put it and how lit hould it be). Then Id project the final onto the canvas board or wood (I never used stretch canvas for portraits)