Thanks for the comments!
I felt a little uneasy about the accident on the spindle sander, but looking at the video clip I think the sandpaper only gripped the insert when I removed the thing I was sanding, which allowed it to lift and spin with the loose paper. So it wasn't as close a call as i'd originally thought.
Also I just spent all night trying to get my tablet working properly. Turns out Windows liked to override the drivers that came with the tablet with its own ones, which were causing a terrible 'jittering', making any fine lines I tried to draw very noticeably jagged. It took alot of fiddling and reinstalling stuff to get it to finally work.
Painting is a hell of a thing though. It's difficult to find any decent information beyond the very basics of perspective, etc.