Swweeeet!
... I love reading that for sure!
Ouch on the black lines! Wow, I'm a little amazed you got that to happen so soon, hahaha, but it's an issue I've already tracked down and shouldn't be happening in the next version.
Other than that... it's good to show humility, but you don't have to tear yourself down everytime, Scott! You're adventure is just starting and you're leaping into it with both feet. That's something I enjoy and respect a lot, so just enjoy it and I'm sure we'll all be there to give you some pointers!
Obviously you're fully aware of lighting already, that's a good thing to have in your backpack as you start off. You should spend some time experimenting with brushes, various stipple and stroke techniques to get a feel for how you create what kind of texture and what kind of shapes. Part of those experiments is to work with the Fluidity settings...ehm...all of them!
One may think that Fluidity itself would be the most important dial up there, but- really- it is Fluid Smudge! With that you can control how soft the paint blend as it is being dragged around. Even with Fluidity at 0.0, Fluid Smudge determines how smudging ( holding down [Shift] while painting ) blends the paints!
Familiarize yourself with the brush gui (And then forget it again, hahaha, because the next version might be quite different, oops). But all in all I want to keep the spirit of it, where you will be working with parameters as opposed to cute icons and fixed presets. Therefore you won't waste your time to get a feel for this level of control over your brush!
Anyway, I'm super happy you're here and keep it coming!