Wow a Wacom Intuos4????? AWESOME! I want an intuos 3 very badly but I can't afford it.
I use a Bamboo aswell but i bought mine like a year back, that too for 8k. Dude milestone you got RIPPED OFF!
Miles, congrats on going digital! Join the club. =D start working on different shades, create a zillion layers and start working on shadows/light sources. It should really help now since you can use photoshop manually.