I took a lot of shortcuts because I am slowly moving away from photoshop/illustrator to open source alternatives like Krita and Gimp. Its kind of a struggle, but I'm hoping with enough practice I'll be as good as I was in P$ in no time! Biggest issue is getting used to the sketching, pressure, and color tools, the colors are kinda all over the place and I'm finding it hard to equalize them.
I kinda hated how I had to spool up a vm to get into photoshop all the time on linux. No longer!
Good on you to switch to alternatives, it's quite brave to break habits. I don't know your usual work, however I find that banner very nice.
I did the previous synthwavy banner one day and also my avatar. I dont actually know if I have the full sized version of my avatar anymore I've swapped systems a lot lately but its marceline from adventure time with a soviet flag.
I have a bunch of other doodles and art I do in my free time, largely for various board game projects that me and friends do, but I can't divulge those because it'd give away my super secret identity 🥷
Ah indeed the face looked familiar! Couldn't figure out from where, didn't watch AT for years