Whatcha need is a page with some really good tutorials. I'm no big master either, but for example Feng Zhu's page helped me a lot just with how to approach things. My personal favourites are James Gurney's books "Imaginative Realism" and "Color and Light". Those got me in a way I just can't submit anything right now because I'm getting better and better and need to constantly go over and over pics with what I can do now, as opposed to three days before or so.Also, with a little time to browse, the dA groupshould have a lot of material worth checking out.Hope this can be of some help to you and you don't mind me jumping in here.