I concur that this is a sensible and in itself a rewarding approach. It does not raise unrealistic expectations, gives you more freedom to think about what matters to you and the design you want to achieve and after a while, your designs will rack up points. Just protect yourself from unreasonable expectations.
There is one item I would warn against doing though:
Models need to appeal to Makers. We tend to respect skill.
However, a prompted images loudest message is: “Fake it until you … fake it again”
So an honest image is usually appreciated more. You may also want to look at this:
Most of it goes well beyond my skills. But I do appreciate an honest pic more than AI enhanced images.
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