Marion:

I have the fingernails of my right hand grown, as Bud suggests, just beyonbd the ends of my fingertips -- same for the thumb nail as I don't use a thumb pick either...

I am a self-taught thumb plus two fingers picker. I use my thumb all over the place as well as using the back of my thumb nail on the reverse stroke for certain patterns. Its what I have become comfortable with and it seems to work well enough for me. The down-side is that it's hard for me to do much Travis style picking (repeating bass pattern in the thumb) because my thumb has a mind of its own and enjoys that wandering up and down all 6 strings.

My best advise is to use whatever works best for you, given the style of music you want to play...if you want to sound like somebody else (Doc Watson, Chet Adkins, Merle Travis) then you'll need to learn a specific finger picking style, or a classic style as you have described. My choice is to make the music my own, and let my natural style interpret the work of others...

Good luck with whatever you choose to do -- and remember, have fun doing it!

pg