your right, learning from the best is important. I watched the cgtalk site for months besides many other sites searching perfect modelers in order to learn something. but the only thing i learned was -> watching others work for months and learning nothing
hope you did not missunderstand me. I just wanted to encourage you doing instead of searching. but it seems you're on the right way
this is my attempt at the chick. I learned it on my own by doing.
everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.