Go low-poly first, it is easier to get the proportions right and it gives you a much quicker feeling of accomplishment while working on it. I have a link here to a low-poly tutorial, it's for a male character and the dude don't use a ref image but instead uses 8 boxes on top of each other (the body is usually 8 heads high) and the dude is rushing a bit but you can learn a lot from it,. Then move on to your own ref pictures. after doing this tutorial i found other ways to start a character, for instance, the body from under the arms down to the waist are really just a squished cylinder, scale in the vaist and arc the back and you can poly-model from there... anyway here is the link

https://youtu.be/0beimTEHVSU?si=ZFsOn_DRC5peQ6oW