My very favorite genre is portraiture. Sargent, Eakins, Cassat, etc. For themes I like odalisques, bathing, some mythological allegory, and studious old men. I think my strongest area is in lighting. I'm not a very technical modeler, and I'm trying not to use very many textures any more, but there's always lighting.
Good lighting can make the simplest models and most primitive engine look great.
The old man is really my first try at facial modeling. I wanted to convey a fragility behind a somewhat imposing presence. For the head, I began in Softimage, just pulling points. When the mesh got too dense, I converted it to polygons and finished all of the detail in polygons. I usually do that with figures.