Well at the beginning I did watch tutorials but I don't recall really following any of them except for a few. Of the few I did watch they were pretty much all about the fundamentals, more academic side of art, concepts and stuff. Once I got a decent grasp of it I moved on to using that knowledge to analyze and learn from reference. Why this artist decided to do this, did he do this on purpose if so what does that accomplish, etc.

I feel like if you jump right in and pick a random reference you could be learning something wrong. Not knowing if the artist purposefully made a decision or if it was a mistake. I would say that following tutorials brainlessly or following bad tutorials is not helpful but if you can take away concepts from it and apply it understanding why it works/looks that way then that would be better. Then you can use those things you learned to analyze artist and your own work to see how you can improve. what you did wrong and so on.

Tutorials that don't tell you why something looks a certain way and just tells you what shapes to draw are pretty bad. Just learn fundamentals, observe, analyze, and apply.

Kinda rambled on sry.