As a 2D artist, I'd recommend leaving the 3D stuff alone and learning the most essential program - Photoshop (which most 3D artists use anyway, in order to do postwork to their images)...for me, the satisfaction of creating a masterpiece with P/shop far outweighs that of buying props and assembling them together in a 3D app. I think that the only real 3D artists are the ones who create their own models or try to do the bulk of the work by themselves....so if you're going down the 3D route, that's what I'd do...otherwise, like Mark_uk says, you end up with 'hey-presto art'!