Yeah, a couple of things, and the crits arent on the model itself, but on your lighting, as it is way too dark.
DO you know how to clay render(and if you have only been using maya for 3 wks I really doubt it).

What you do is you create a plane about twice the size of the model, and you assign it a material "lambert" with incandescence turned all the way up. YOu assign your entire model to Lambert 1, and then you open up render globals.

From there you change the renderer from maya software to Mental Ray. Then you go to Final Gather, and you turn it on and set the rays between 150 - 750. THe more rays, the longer it takes to render. Now, go to the common section and you go al the way to the bottom, and you uncheck use default lights.

Then you render. If it still is too dark, then you make the plane larger. The larger the plane, ,the more light is shown. I hope that helped, and if you already knew this I am verry sorry. But anyway.
Keep up the good work,

cYa LatEr,
MaTt