i’m a novice when it comes to web design. i know basic html, css, but absolutely have no experience or knowledge when it comes to graphics design. i wanna get into making my own designs, rather than relying on free layouts, or having to pay someone for what i want.
so can a website look good without any graphics? and just use html \ css?
The answer is yes, certainly you can have a nice design minus images. Have you visited: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/news-announcements-38/spf-pure-html-css-competition-winners-744353.html and looked at the showcase link in post#1 http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/news-announcements-38/spf-pure-html-css-competition-winners-744353-2.html#post4839600
Obviously not all those 34 designs would be practical on a large site but all they used was HTML and CSS with NO images. 
wow that’s incredible. those people must be real pros. i can’t even fathom how they did those designs without images. i guess i have a lot to learn. 
They were done by people from all skill levels but it’s a nice illustration of what you can do with modern application of CSS in a good browser given the time. Clearly for a production site some of those designs might not work too well.
Though I hope it’s given you some more confidence regarding whether a site can look nice with minimal (or zero images in the competition case) or something to aspire towards.
You can create good looking website with html and css only. Here are some demo’s showing websites created using css: