Internship ends, Requests = Commissions, Poses??

Hey there everyone.
So, I have finished my internship at minds eye creative and I have to say that the experience was very enlightening (Pun Intended.) XD
One of the things that I have learnt I need to do is to practice my are every day while at the same time, be able to gain some cash.

So I have decided to start doing commissions and freelance work here. I have a huge stockpile of requests that I have neglected for years and I will be contacting those people to see If they still want me to do them, only this time for a price.
I'm very new to making actual money here so if you guys could give me some pointers as to how I can do that, I would be very grateful.

Finally, during my internship, I discovered that I need to improve my gesture drawing and poses as up to this point, my characters, although detailed, have been very flat and static in their posture and poses. The way that I will be improving this is by drawing people and models in a variety of interesting positions (If you guys know of any sites of pages I can go to for this, please let me know). This can be difficult to master and some artists have to base their drawings off of models because of this.
This leads into the question I will leave to you guys. If I make a drawing based of of a models gesture, does it take away from my creative credit because I am basing my drawing off something else?

What do you guys think? I look forward to exchanging some thoughts on this.
Hope you all have a fantastic day.
Thanks for reading.