I'm a starting art student myself, so at the moment I'm learning a lot of the basics and trying to do as much life drawing and master copies as time allows. When I'm not doing that, I like creating cartoon characters with the vector tools in Flash. I find the different brushes there to be great especially for someone new who has less dexterity.

I think it'd be totally awesome to have contests at this blog. I've seen complete beginners create amazing things elsewhere depending on the theme chosen, it just depends on the passion sometime; technical prowess is always impressive though.