Nikkie,
I came at Photoshop from a different direction, that of already spending 40 years as a creator in all sorts of different media...including viewing construction as an artistic medium. To me, the drive to create is all important. Learning the tools is vital to be able to realize your creations but if the initial drive is strong enough time, money, or learning is not an obstacle. I spent two years spread out over a 17 year span to create just one sculpture. Along the way I had to learn, blacksmithing, welding, chemical etching and a several related skills to pull it off. Did I become an expert in those fields, no. Was I able to create a highly refined sculpture which almost exactly matched the original inspired visualization? Emphatically, yes!
I've never been a great fan of the concept that one must learn first, without the context of doing, and then apply the learning. That divorces learning from the reality of its purpose. I prefer to start creating and learn in the context of actual creation. Of course that means that one's initial efforts are crude but, as you have a contextual need to learn, it makes sense and is stimulating. For example, think of participating in the monthly challenges which Gare proposes. The couple in which I've participated have been fun, I've learned new skills and had to practice older incomplete ones, and had my horizons expanded by seeing and appreciating the creative visions and differing abilities to express them which other participants have shared.
Any set of tools to create is just that. When one has gained mastery over them, they do become 'transparent' to the user as one doesn't particularly have to think about them...and yet all that means is that you are using the tricks you have already learned. You can even be an expert and have a big bag of tricks at that, however, if that's all you are doing, you've become a technician and it might be a practical and lucrative situation in which to find oneself but real creation is a dynamic state of constantly expanding horizons.
I'd also like to rephrase one of Erik's thoughts about the motivations of the creator. It seems to me that one can view a spectrum of creative intent as being anchored at one end by Discovery and the other by Invention. Most often the practitioners of one of the extreme ends, tends to disparage the other. I think any creative soul can use both ends of that spectrum to good purpose (and any where in between the two ends for that matter). You can begin creating with an exact internal visualization and then make it happen. It does behoove one to be open for discovery during the process for a degree of flexibility will embellish the creative Invention during the process. I consider that a type of responsibility... the ability to respond. Starting from the other end of the spectrum, one can just start rummaging around in ones bag of tricks and imagination to bring form to an inchoate feeling. The resulting voyage of Discovery can be a total delight. I would hope creative people would find themselves at different points of this sliding scale of Discovery and Invention at the beginning of each undertaking.
I'd like to add an additional term to the mix. Inspiration. Let me define inspiration simply as the light bulb going off in the top of ones head. I think all creative people know that one. At the Invention end of the spectrum, the inspiration comes first as the light bulb goes off, and the energy which enters one's being takes the ideas and points of view which you have already earned by experience and rearranges them into a new form. Thus you are given an inner visualization and the excitement to carry it forth. On the Discovery end of the spectrum, the sense of inspiration strikes after the fact of discovery and the rush of the light bulb going off accompanies the expansion of your personal horizons, a new infinity of possibilities, and your increased connection to the universe in which we are mere babes in the woods.
(Uh-oh he's gone off ranting again...somebody get the fire hose and cool him off, please)
As a final facetious aside... You can make an artist into a nerd but you can't make a nerd into an artist!
Joy, you break me up... I know that was "on purpose"!