I don't know if this may help or not but I feel like working on things through self study might help you in this situation. I get your need to find projects to help build you up but one of the things I would emphasize is having others give you constructive feedback and doing some drawing jams or collaborations with other artists might also help you in the long run far as finding work and continuing to build that portfolio.

The best thing I can encourage you to do on my end is getting you into a growth mindset and work your way up to the next few levels of mastery and building relationships with other people as you network. By then you will have some opportunities to work on projects come to you naturally and that will help you get the positions you want.

You got something in your talent, the question is what are the best ways we can help you refine it. Hence why I brought those communities up.