/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

Oldfag that actually improved a lot after years of being a failure.

Learn techniques and fundamentals from photography, film language, 3D tools like blender and posing doll software, anime generators, and shit from concept art techniques like photobashing and kitbashing and even now AI stuff.
And also learn to use them to use them as aditional reference tools or directly into your 2D piece.

And don't worry too much about the "morally correct way", there's not such thing as "morally correct way among pros".
If a technique considered cheating by perma/begs/ allows to improve your quality, use it.

Most pros use plenty of cheating techniques from 3D artists or photographers that /ic/ would scream is cheating.