Inspiring work

Detail from "The light of hope" by Deng Jiansi

Here are some sites that have tons of tutorials on every imaginable (well...) method of doing models, maps, lights etc. Of course the list is endless since the 3D community is so huge, but you have to start somewhere. Thanks to Nada for providing these links.
One thing that you will realize is that you must have a basic understanding of different techniques like box and spline-modeling, texturing tools etc. to fully understand some of the more advanced tutorials, however I think by now it would benefit you enormously to check them out if just to get inspired by the level of work being done worldwide and, I must say, by the generous sharing of ideas and techniques by so many great artists.

Links: http://www.3dtutorials.sk/
http://www.cgtutorials.com/

This is a spline modeling tutorial which is clear and simple. Angelina Jolie by Song, Hwasup.
Link to PDF file.