Randomaire, I agree it can be quite a jump going from strumming chords to holding and picking out individual notes with fingerstyle. And that's one reason why I wrote a lesson on
pattern picking or fingerstyle
acompaniment. At its simplest, you are still holding a chord, as you do with strumming, but you focus just on your picking hand and play a repeating pattern with fingers. Once you've got the pattern established, you just keep it going, throughout the song, changing chords where necessary. You can apply the patterns as an accompaniment to many songs and you don't need to follow tab to do it - just chord sheets (or memory). It soon becomes as easy and automatic as strumming and it trains the fingers of your picking hand, so that when you'r ready to attempt solo fingertyle pieces, with their ever-changing combinations of strings and notes with both hands, you'll be much better equipped to do it.
If you've already tried the fingerstyle accompaniment lesson and didn't find it helpful, feel free to point out its shortcomings - and I might be able to improve it.
But if you haven't tried it yet - have a look
here.