Thank you to everyone for your encouragement and comments. At some point I hope to respond to people individually, but right now I'm too busy cranking out more images and doing design college homework (and those two activities overlap far less then they ought to).
Also, I'm interested in any responses to my 3-D work. I have many reservations about 3-D graphics (mostly whether they can ever be as evocative as more organic approaches to image making), but I'm having so much fun with the software. I'm still trying to decide whether to continue learning it, or to spend that time doing more paintings.
Okay, back to work now!
Thanks again for the warm welcome.
~Michael