Any suggestions on where to start with the artwork for a complete newbie? I'm very interested in game programming but the artwork has somewhat discouraged me for quite a bit.
2D: study cartooning. Buy a Wacom tablet. Suck it up and buy Photoshop and Illustrator.
Adobe Creative Cloud membership is $50/mo, which is basically the price of Photoshop alone in a year, but gets you access to everything.
Audio: I started using Audition because of the CC membership, and it's been great (I've also put together a few, simple videos with Premiere because of CC). I find Audition is actually kind of fun to use.
Get yourself a drum machine of some kind. I have one of the older Korg Kaossilators, a handheld device that runs on batteries. The new ones are even better. I plug the headphone jack into the microphone jack of my computer and I record directly into Audition. Making serviceable music for games is quite easy with it. Just remember that less is more when it comes to music, and don't be afraid to do non-traditional stuff, off beat, dissonant. It's easy to make and creates much more atmosphere.
Neither I was able to figure out on my own, but they were all quite easy to use after reading a few tutorials on them.
Just remember, treat it like programming. You're not going to get it overnight.