wish i had a good answer for you but no. my knowledge is pretty much entirely composed of just beating my head against shit until i memorize it or experimenting until i come up with a solution to a problem i didnt even know i had.
the best advice i can give you is look at the art/artists you look up to and try to reproduce that without watching streams or tutorials or anything. try and puzzle it out. whether you are able to fully reproduce what they did is unlikely but you're 100% going to walk away from the experience having learned something and that's the key
not the anon, but maybe a helpful prompt: what's your tool stack?
I'm not interested in illustrating (at the moment at least), but often the hardest thing is all of time-saving and effort-saving stuff that's out there.
especially for digital things, but also just in general

