Yeah, I don't really do it much now though (blame MMO's) I would suggest maybe http://www.3dtotal.com they have a few decent tutorials to get you started. For lighting there are various different solutions, 3 point system, global illumination, object lights to name a few. Vray is a good renderer, I believe they do a pretty open free version too. Brazil by Splutterfish just recently unveiled a new version too, so maybe they have a demo of that on the site. I hear Maxwell Render is good, but takes a long time to render. Try modeling things around you, that's probably the best way as you have actual live reference to look at. Might as well say it too: That looks nothing like a rubix cube.