Blender gives me some really amazing results. I was never artistically inclined outside of film stuff, but I've been having a blast testing out what can be made in a free program. Honestly, I think it can be a huge help for environmental work, especially when you are working with tricky perspectives. Its tricky to get the shading right to make it appear "hand drawn" but that shouldn't be the goal, its far easier to use it for creating references for backgrounds or character poses that might be more difficult otherwise.
I have a lot of fun in it! (Bottom two were made following tutorials, but are good examples of environments and using a frame from a physics simulation for scenes with complicated motion!)
