/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

that's my prompting style

A serious problem:

How do I "scale" my sketches, drawings etc? While drawing from life I just copy the size of whatever I draw to be exactly as big as I see it (or my brain thinks it sees the object). When I try to scale I get weird distortions like vertically it's super thin while horizontally it's still the same as in life. The proportions are wrong.

I reached the level where my awful drawings could be just cutouts of photos taken at a position I did sit or look from.

As a complete beginner who wants to get into drawing as a hobby (having no aspirations at all to turn it into a career of any kind), where do I start? Should I take a class? Buy books? Draw specific things (like starting with, idk, faces, perfect those, then move on)? Draw whatever? Try to copy photos? How did you start (assuming you didn't start when you were 3)
pic related is pretty much the level I'm at (but not something I did)