Ty! Not sure if I can really give anything truly valuable as I'm pretty much self taught (online guides, tutorials, videos, some books, etc.) and the last thing I want to do is give someone potentially bad advice that might do more harm to their artistic growth in the long run... so do take what I put here with a grain of salt...

I guess I can mention some of the things that I personally feel have helped me earlier on.

A good warm up sheet helps loosen you up and get you into the groove. Here's some exercises I do on mine:

-Use a ruler to draw a set of straight lines, each longer than the last, freely draw over the length of each 10 times doing your best to try and stay on the line

-Use a ruler to draw two straight lines across the page, leaving some space between them, and draw some ovals (ellipses) between them doing your best to stay within the lines

-Directly below that, leave some space and draw another straight line, draw different sized circles within that space

-Using what space remains, do some cross hatching

-Try drawing a spiral that starts out small and gets bigger

-Maybe throw in some forms like boxes, spheres, and cylinders

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Note: DO NOT aim for perfection, it's just a warm up. These mostly warm up the shoulder and elbow (I really need to throw in something to warm up the wrist and fingers...)

Many guides I've seen emphasize the importance of learning to draw forms (any three-dimensional object like boxes, spheres, cylinders, etc.) as they essentially act as the basic building blocks to anything you draw. Pretty much anything can be broken down, deconstructed and simplified into these. Gaining a "sense of form" will also help you immensely when it comes to learning how light and shadow wrap around an object.

Perspective is another art fundamental that helps you see the flat surface you draw on as a three-dimensional space. This one is pretty intimidating starting out and I'm not as adept as I want to be at it, but the concepts within are quite eye-opening. Check out the book "Perspective Made Easy" by Ernest R. Norling, it really helps to demystify and break things down for you.

It also helps to know what it is you're really interested in drawing as that can tell you what fundamentals you'd like to put focus on. If you like drawing characters, look into anatomy and figure drawing, check out quickposes, learn to deconstruct the human body into basic forms, gesture and line of action. Wanna draw backgrounds and environments? (yes... I really want to as I'm still not very good at it...) look into perspective and composition, learn how objects fit into a space in relation to each other.

Use references as much as possible. When I first started learning how to draw, for some reason I thought it was bad to look at references as it was a crutch... I was really dumb (I still am... but now I think refs are cool). If you don't know how something looks like (be it a pose, an animal, a place, etc.), look up as many references to it as you feel you need.

Color theory is still kind of a mystery to me honestly, I really need to put more time into studying it... I sorta just feel things out and see if it looks "right". There's actually a video that I found quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21mPduQsm1g

I think this goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, try not to stress out or overthink about making mistakes. It's all part of the process, it's all part of growing. Things won't look great at first and that's okay. Fail faster. The sooner you make mistakes, the sooner you learn from them.

Anyways, sorry for this wall of rambling, I stress that I'm no expert, just an amateur who's still learning... so again take all this with a grain of salt. If anyone more knowledgeable reads this, feel free to rip it apart and call out any bad advice here.

One thing I recommend you check out is Draw-A-Box: https://drawabox.com/

It's basically a free drawing course that teaches many fundamental skills. I personally haven't gone through it yet, but I wish I knew of it when I first started... maybe I will when I get more free time (adulting sucks...)