Affordable studio light for a portrait shooter?

I'm a 17-year-old photographer that has little money to work with. However, my parents don't mind investing some of their money toward my photography. (as long as the price is reasonable)

So here's the thing: I'm a portrait shooter, and I work with natural light because that's all I have. I want to start working with studio lighting. (preferably portable) What kind of lighting would work well with what I shoot? (continuous, strobes, etc.) Is there a specific product you'd recommend?

Here's a link to my flickr to give you a better idea of what and how I shoot:
http://flickr.com/photos/kkyungah

By the way, I have no knowledge about flash or lighting.

If you know flash then get some and sync cables, they are far more portable than constants. From the style of your shoots I think constant will suit you better. If you know how to operate flash off camera manually use it. If not constants will do it. Hard to answer really, what do you want to do and do you know flash?

Added: btw your images are very nice, you have some abillity and I like your style alot.

Check at shutterbug.com and type 'lighting' in the Search box. Their Oct. issue (every year) is devoted to light and lighting equipment.

Look through http://www.dg28.com/ for a good overview of some of the many techniques you can use in lighting.

That said, what you get depends on what you want to do and how much power you need. If you're set on studio strobe heads, a good budget option is the Alien Bees system (http://www.alienbees.com).

www.BHphotovideo.com

They have a 3 light set by Impact, comes with stands, umbrellas, bulbs..the whole nine yards for just over $200.

It is a tungsten hotlight set.