I'd love to learn unity or UE4 properly and write a little 3D indie game. Written a few in 2 dimensions but the step up to 3 is daunting. Plus I don't know blender or Maya...yet

I can recommend blender, since it's free and you will love it (whene you got used to it). Also there are lots and lots of tutorials out there. I can recommend blenderguru's two episodes for total beginners. Then follows a lot of training and watching until you know your stuff...
I do also think of gleb alexandrov and his site creativeshrimp. He really does have another style. They both know their stuff.
And with your artworks: share them! Nothing is better than people telling you how to improve. That also is what makes good artists.
Good luck and have fun on your long journey.

And btw: blender is a bit like vim: once you get used to it you will like it's workflow and wish every software would work like it. Especially the gui...

I love vim so this sounds like great advice. Thanks and merry Xmas!

And btw: gleb alexandrov did some tutorials on creating assets in blender for unity. I'm more the ue4 fan, but you can adapt it, i think. I can also recommend his workflow of photoscanning with free tools. It's great and helpful!

MY FRIEND WANTED A WEBSITE SO HE COULD PLAY GAMES BLOCKED AT OUR SCHOOL. IT WAS MADE WITH UNITY AND IT WAS SO GODDAMN HARD TO FIND ALL THE SCRIPTS AND RESOURCES NEEDED. Eventually I downloaded all the scripts and has to change the XMLHttpRequests to a local folder... It took an hour