Welcome to the Guild Nymbos115! Did a 5-year sting in SoCal (North OC) myself while in Seminary. Love to see some of your hand-drawn work (you can post it up in the Finished Maps sections). As to learning digital cartography, well there are heaps of great tutorials available in the tutorials section. If you want a nice break down by software have a look a the sticky in that section entitled "Tutorials in PDF format". If you currently don't have any graphics software you should definitely download GIMP, a free raster program similar (though less powerful) to Photoshop. It is well supported in the tutorials here. Well, I wish you all the best in your quest. Once you begin a project post up a WIP so as to receive constructive feedback.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh