Oh gosh since I could pick up a pencil I guess! I drew a lot of pkmn fanart since I’ve watched the anime a lot as a kid lol. I mostly wanted to draw girls…
I wasn’t really big on tracing, I just referenced from whatever anime had interested little me at the time (mostly pkmn, sailor moon, ccs, and ygo).
When I got older I had taken art classes that did their usual “no anime, draw what you see” sort of approach. While I think the anti anime approach sucks for various reasons, I do think drawing from life is a useful practice.

If I feel particularly rusty I’ll pull out some of my loomis books (as far as I kno they’re easy to find) and recently those morpho books as they’re more compact and provide a more useful perspective on how the body works. I still have much to practice honestly, but I still have a life ahead of me! Plenty of time for improvement…
I suppose my bit of advice is to have a combination of life drawing practice and ofc see how ur preferred art style works. See how they bend the rules to a pleasing result.