Floating vertex

Hello,
New to Blender here. I am in the process of creating my first character following this tutorial. I am trying to create a vertex as shown at 0:50 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY3OOh_-Uus&list=PL32001WLw6WG8glAk8LpFO1dbDbBGE8bI&index=8
The problem is that when I ctrl+click, the vertex that is made is always hovering in space and not on the body of the character. I thought that the fix would be just clicking the magnet icon as this has worked for other things in the past, but no luck. I need the vertex to be essentially stick to the character so I can continue to make the faces around the arm withought having to readjust every little vertex. THank you!

did you select the magnet with snapping to face projection ?

happy bl