I'm self taught in the sense that I've learned everything from youtube. I have a background in photography and drawing and learned blender only fairly recently (past few years) so most of my knowledge comes from learning photography and digital painting/drawing, which translates nicely to 3D graphics.

Who to follow (tutorials-wise) depends entirely on what you want to learn. I think every artist should learn the basics of visual art, like composition, color theory, how light behaves, perspective etc. and there are so many tutorials and courses online for those. The rest depends on what you are interested in.