the best piece of advice i can give you is make your own textures. they will suck at first but in time they will improv, same as your modeling. also its easyer to learn texturing and uv mapping while your models are still relatively simple. the last thing you want to do is become a master modeler and not know how to texture. when you designt a model it is essential to take uv mapping and texturing into account. otherwise you end up with a reject model that has frustrated you to the point it endsup in a model dump somewhere.
also if your looking to 'aquire' a better version of ts, id go with 6, it has all the uv mapping tools you will need and a somwhat usefull uv editor.