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Here's what I have done (and continue to do): Talk to several people you know whom you would like to paint and who would perhaps make good sample portraits (little girl/little boy/woman/man/siblings/couples/corporate, etc). Ask them if they would pose for a half hour photo session. Most of them will be quite flattered. Make up a simple model's release that says it's okay for you to produce artwork from their image and use the resulting painting in your marketing efforts. Then you could either pay them the going rate of $12 or so an hour as a model, or give them a few 8x10 prints of the best photos as a thank you.
This way you will always have plenty of your own reference material lying around that you can draw or paint from whenever the mood strikes. Then when you create another of your wonderful portraits based on these photos, you can confidently splash the resulting images across your business cards, website, and even hang the painting in a show without fear of repercussions of any kind.
And best of all, the entire work, from concept to composition to lighting to the painting execution itself, is all your own creation.
If there's even the slightest chance that whatever we paint or draw will please us enough that we will want to show it in our portfolios, (and of course many of them will) then we owe it to ourselves to get reference material that doesn't violate copyright laws, or privacy laws concerning images of people.
The time we have available to work on our art is so very limited. Why create a beautiful work of art if we can't show it to people via our portfolio, or if the work is only half our own because it's a copy of someone else's photo?
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