Definitely ese your body into it. After several months of conditioning your body to the various exercises you can do with each body part, then start in on the actual molding/sculpting of your body. Form matters. I cannot stress this enough. I spend a good deal of time in my gym watching high school guys doing exercises very wrong--to the point I have intervened a couple times before one of them hurt themselves. YouTube has piles of videos showing correct form of various exercises. Also remember that in any fitness undertaking, as my body building trainer said it to me "it's 70% dietary choice and 30% gym." That is, you put low grade fuel in the car, you car performs poorly. Garbage in, garbage out.
Once you have your foundation and built some endurance (so we are talking after at least three months of learning and acclimatizing) then it's time to do the actual development. At this point you have to consider the type of body you have. You will fall into one of three types: ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph. Ectomorphs are, which I am one, have hyper-metabolisms from hell. We are lean, runner's swimmer's builds and burn food almost as fast as we eat it. You'll often hear the term "hard gainer" in relation to the ectomorph. Endomorphs are the other end of the spectrum and they gain weight so easily, the have trouble losing weight. the endomorph are you thick power lifter, football linemen type guys, thick, strong with a bit of a gut (side note" it's an American fable that you have to be cut/shredded to be fit. you can have some fat on your body and be in great shape--just ask any NFL lineman). The mesomorphs are the luckiest of the three as they have the best of both worlds, they can gain and lose weight fairly easily.
As a general rule, if you are trying to put on size and build major strength, you will want to use heavy weight and lower reps (2 to 8). If you are trying to build endurance or tone you want lighter weight at higher reps (10 to 15+). Another part of the American shredded muscle fable is that people don't look like that year round in the main. In bodybuilding, for instance, we have a bulking season that consists of high calories, high protein, yielding muscle, strength and some fat gains. Then, going into competition season, we have cutting season, where the workout routine shifts from the low rep/heavy weight to the high rep/low weight and our diets become super "clean" (meaning lots of turkey, chicken, fish and salad and ever decreasing amounts of carbohydrates). Also, get yourself a good after workout protein drink. If you are a hard gainer like me you will want something like Optimum Nutrition's Serious Mass, which is high in protein and carbs, but very low in added sugar (use just one scoop, not the labeled two). If you are an endomorph, get one that is high in protein but low in carbohydrates.
Lastly, do NOT do the same exercises in the same order every single week. That is the fastest path to a "plateau" which refers to a point where your performance and gain/losses flatten and go nowhere. Your body is very adaptive. After two or three months of same it gets the idea: today he'll be doing barbell flat bench for 3 sets of 10 reps followed by..." and it will stop responding. So, mix it up. Change exercise orders, move between barbells and dumbbells and machines. Don't give your body too much opportunity to become comfortable with a predictable routine so it will keep responding. Too many guys (like the high school boys I mentioned) are wrapped up in how much weight hey can lift. unless you are competing in power lifting, the weight is irrelevant. The goal is to get your body to respond and grow and reshape itself. The strength will come with the muscle development, but how much weight is NOT the focus. Don't let it distract you!
Good luck!!