Oy, Alioth is looking good! I do like the name, it has an "old english" ring to it, like "Arthur" or "Aldith". Al for short works too.
The piece is coming along great! and I may be biased but I like the colors more!
A bit too pretty for my likes. When I think of a king, I think of King Arthur, Varian or Terenas Menethil. Rough, decisive, someone you can rally behind and know he'll have your back. Never been a fan of Anduin. But you did say he was "forced into the position" in a way, so it kinda makes sense he doesn't seem as rough (yet). He seems more of a prince charming at the moment.
That's personal preference though, I can appreciate how it's coming along, and as usual the colors and brushwork is coming along great.
As for comissions, yea, I think it'll be a lot of try and see what sticks, what people use and how easy it is to use. I haven't really asked for comissions myself, but if I did I would want the experience to be as seemless as possible.
As for pricing, something that works for me, not necessarily for artwork, but in general, is to think how much do you value your time. For example, let's say you would do an hourly job for $20 dollars per hour after taxes. Then simply multiply the hourly wage for how long it takes and you have a starting price. You can use other jobs you've had as a baseline, so for example, an office job may pay you $20 after breaking down a salary to hours. Say a piece takes you 3 hours, that's $60 as a starting point. Then look at what others charge for similar comissions and move the number around to be competitive, since a customer will take a look at your price and check on others to see who can give him the best quality for the least price.
It's also always a good idea to price yourself high as anchoring, on the high range of your peers, but add a "discount" to give the customer the illusion that he's getting a good deal. Say you feel you should price yourself at $60. Set the price to the customer at $100 with a "temporal" discount of 40%, even better, let him know it's a discount "only for him". We customers love that. That also helps you elevate your price later if you feel you should charge more without actually rising the price, you just reduce the discount.
Marc does it all the time where he always has a "discount" for his course xD, it's just a good business practice.
It's always a good idea to look out and behave as a customer to others (preferibly people who have experience doing it), take notes on the experience you get as a customer, and set your stuff to reproduce this experience as a worker yourself, because hey, if it works for them, then it should logically work for you.
Alright that's very long already, I'm done ranting. Bests of luck!
