How to get at least slightly better at web design / design work?

I am a software person getting asked to do a lot of design work in a temporary position, which I am HORRIBLE at. Please help me make things of which I'm at least slightly proud.

Basically, I am 100% NOT a front-end / UX person. Usability is super important and I care a lot about it in apps that I personally use, but if you sit me down with a blank white screen and tell me to make something that looks good / feels usable, I... will add Bootstrap, then stare back at you until someone lets me go home.

Not really, but my product is always super lame and vaguely off. The navigation doesn't feel quite right, the colors are bland (I'm afraid of color), I'm not at all proud of the final product. It usually stays pretty 2-dimensional. Apps that I admire are usually simple but bold, calming, feel modern and are fairly intuitive. Hard!

In the olden days, pre-Bootstrap and pre-app revolution, when web design was more idiosyncratic, I did do it for fun-- I felt like I was expressing myself. I regularly redesigned my personal blog and it was kind of cool. I'm actually kind of artistic in real life; I like fashion and sketch things to relax. But web design now seems a lot more scientific and user-tested and I'm not really familiar with the principles of the work.

I know women get tasked with design work even when it's not their job all the time, and I find that really frustrating (I am quite sure they wouldn't give any of this design work to one of the other male temps because they would assume they're "nerds" and therefore not artistic), but this is a short-term thing that is sort of an apprenticeship, so technically I should be excited about learning new things. I also feel that on the rare occasion when I get a bee in my bonnet about a web/app project, sometimes not being able to do any design work on it holds me back a bit-- I feel like the final product won't be the sleek usable thing I'm picturing in my mind. So I do want to improve for the sake of i t.

Are there simple resources out there for someone like me who has no color/art training but wants to make good, strategic design choices, and make a solid visual product? Are there workflows?

Source: How to get at least slightly better at web design / design work?