Thanks for sharing your secrets - yes, it does inspire.  Pulsing Stillness has a very painterly quality I like.  I'm still learning 3d but I also have been doing commercial work (very different style).  I just finished a huge mat painting project with close to a trillion polygons and at least 100 layers of PS post work.  But despite that, I'm really a noob flying by the seat of my pants and trying to learn as much as I can.  I like the serendipity approach but tend to get so disorganized myself I need take a structured approach.  Having a technical background helps with computer and such but is a bit of a handicap when it comes to breaking away with a more artisitic approach.  So a little knowledge can be dangerous!

I haven't worked with gels much either, but they are worth exploring.  Up until now though, my old machine was too slow to get much done with gels.  But for a painterly style, they seem like an interesting (albeit slower) option to post work - with a slightly different effect than you can get with PS post.  The concept is quite easy though, if you want a tree with redder leaves, try a red light gel nearby.  I suppose you could sort of "paint" your scene like this and get different results (translucency and subsurface scattering) that you wouldn't obtain with PS saturation, filters or transforms.