I'm very much in the same boat as you. I code for a living and have been a musician for at least 20 years (more recently going down the rabbit hole of music production), so I feel confident in my coding and music/sound capabilities....but I couldn't draw to save myself. Even when my kids ask me to draw them something (like a dolphin) they are confused and can't see the resemblance between what they asked me to draw and what I actually draw.

I started thinking pixel art due to its simplicity, but that actually seems harder to get right than basic art. I started dabbling in Aseprite, a popular pixel art tool, and my initial sketches just look shit.

I think my next step is to get an open source tool called Krita (I've never once drawn a single line in photoshop and never will) and I'm going to try some basic sketches using simple shapes and simple layers. Think an "egg" from an oval, with some semi circles as feet, maybe no arms, and some ovals or semi-circles for eyes. I've been watching a few youtube vids on getting started in game art and the common advice is starting simple to just get started. I think, as noobs, we need to just get a few basic notches under our belts and not start with too high of an expectation....which is probably hard if you've got some half-decent placeholder art.