ayam using clip studio paint for painting
i can easily find cracks of it but its so useful for me i just buy it anyway. additional bonus of access to CSP store for brushes and materials
PRO version lah. No need the EX, those functions are more for mangaka/comic artist/animators, which for illustrators you dont really need them.
Used to use Medibang, while it is competent enough, there's quite a lot of useful features on CSP to make it worth it. eg: A key shortcut to switch to eyedropped layer, especially useful if you want to edit an accessory color layer and you have 100+ layers at the same time.

also have CSP for android, but my Tab S3 is a bit laggy for it, so i just use Medibang for portable drawing. CSP for mobiles are subs unfortunately

ayem think if wanna use PS for personal use, I'd just torrent the older standalone versions
no need to give money for subscription bullcrap
Or just use GIMP.
Man I remember in 2011 or so, I hated the UI of the old GIMP. toolbars flying everywhere lol.

3D stuffs, I'm just using Blender. It's more than competent for learning.
2D mesh skeletal animation, I'm just using Creatures or Live2D
Audacity for simple audio editting (been using it for a long time, always handy)