Blender Basics

One thing that I really enjoy about modeling with Blender is the quick manner in which I work. This is made possible by all the keyboard shortcuts that you use while working on your model. In fact, the ideal way to work quickly with Blender is to use both hands: Your left hand on your keyboard (to quickly access shortcuts), and your right one on the mouse.
When you first launch Blender you will realize that there are 3 default objects on your workspace: a cube, a camera and a lamp. We will be manipulating this cube to model the head of our first character. There are three(or so) keyboard shortcuts that we will be focusing on (at least for today) to achieve this, viz E (to Extrude whatever is selected), S (to Scale/reSize whatever is selected ), R (to Rotate selection) and maybe G (to Grab whatever is selected).

Oh yes you will also be using the TAB keyboard shortcut to toggle between the Object Mode and the Edit Mode. (You will be switching back and forth a lot between these two modes as you work).

Here are some of the few things that you should keep in mind before we begin.
 Unlike other major 3D applications, Right-clicking and Left-clicking have a different implementation in Blender. You will be Right-clicking to make a selection, while Left-clicking will be used to carry out the command of the selected tool. For an example, you want to move or resize the cube on your space right now? Select it (by Right-clicking it, of course). Press S to select the Scale tool, then right-click and drag (to the left to make it smaller or to the right to make it bigger). Left-click to stop the resize action if you are happy with the new size OR right-click to abort the operation altogether, in which case the cube will jump back to its previous size.
Using both the mouse and the keyboard at the same time has proven to be a very powerful and faster way for me to work. I hope you will also find it helpful.

 Blender User Interface