Snigelmannen

Respectfully, if one is put off by focusing too much on rigor initially then I think drawabox is the exact opposite of what you want. It is an incredibly rigid, grindy way of acquiring some basic mark making and perspective skills. The first part of it worked great for me, as I am spectrummy and dont mind grinding as it puts me in a flow state, but I only stuck with it up to the 250 box challenge. At that point I was having so much fun drawing actual things I cared about that this is what I transitioned to spend my time on. I would probably benefit from sticking with it further, but I am doing this for fun rather than to become a technically amazing illustrator. My background is photography, and this is a way for me to get stuff out very quickly without finding people and places, schlepping lights, dealing with camera stuff, developing film, scanning film, removing dust from scans, color correcting, and doing editing. It's incredibly freeing.

Excessive focus on copying from reference is the old atelier method, and it is not the only way. Sure, you need to do some of this, but it is IMHO better to focus on trying to draw from imagination from day one, and then find the weaknesses in what you produce and then draw from reference or watch a tutorial to for example figure out how to make a mouth look ok. This way you are trying to solve concrete problems that are obstacles to what you are passionate about rather than doing endless aimless copying. This makes the process (again IMHO) more fun and sustainable. You do need to have a little bit of a general framework to base your drawing around, and that can be gotten (if you like to draw people) by learning some basics about how to draw stick like figures marionettes as an armature to build your person around. See for example the first few chapters in Loomis book "Figure drawing for all it is worth". This has worked for me as a beginner. For a video putting forward a similar view from an expert, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rlF-qE-vsM

You may want to take a gander at Marco Bucci's book about creativity and the campfire (5 bucks for kindle version). It is a look at myths of talent and inspiration from someone that is a pro artist and have thought a lot about things.

A thing I'd like to add is that it really helps to figure out what brings you joy to draw. It is a lot of work to acquire great drawing skills, but if you work on things that brings you joy then it does not feel like nearly as much grind. And also: The trick is to stick with it long enough that you get over the hump to where you can make technically imperfect drawings that still feels like they have promise. Then the fire becomes self fuelling and it is a great feeling. You need to grind some to get to this point, but then the momentum takes hold. Also: You can draw fun things from day one without it being photo realistic if you adopt the proper mind set: Look at Ivan Brunetti's book on comic production or Lynda Barries syllabus book about comics. Both of them focus on immediately working on storytelling without getting held up by drawing skills. You start with what is essentially just a figure that is a few simple basic shapes and figure out how to do meaningful things with this. The drawing skill will accumulate as you keep working on the underlying subject matter you care about.

I don't really know how one would be able to learn very much about writing from this book other in the basic sense of "hey: creative things can be a fun pastime, and can be relaxing if you are feeling burnt out".

Here is what I did: I started with drawabox.com, which is basically a very rigid but free of cost boot camp style of starting from just drawing a line on a piece of paper. Simultaneously I read Lynda Barries' book on comic making and her book "Syllabus", and adopted her way of doing quick visual journaling every day. I read the Loomis book "Fun with a pencil" which is a book aimed at kids for drawing cartoony little things progressing to more realistic anatomy. This lead me to Loomis' books "Figure drawing for all its worth" and "Successful drawing". (the latter being a book on incorporating perspective in drawing). From there I have used various resources. A breakthrough for me was Rebecca Tillman Youngs online course on portrait drawing (which is basically teaching the Loomis method of drawing the head in a slow and methodical way) in that it allowed me to draw faces that I genuinely was excited about. From there resources that have been useful to me are Marco Bucci's online class "Drawing for advanced beginners", the books "Figure drawing: design and invention", "Anatomy for artists, drawing form and pose", "the Vilppu manual", ""Anatomy for sculptors", and "Rey's anatomy" (not Grey's anatomy). The best book on perspective I have found is Atteberry's "The complete guide to perspective". I have read a ton of other books, but these are the keepers.

In five months I have gone through three 100 page sketchbooks and I have had fun and reached flow state pretty consistently the whole time through. The first of the sketchbooks was basically just drawabox exercises up until the 250 boxes challenge. At this point I transitioned away from drawabox as I was having enough fundamentals to have fun and make progress on drawings I cared about.

All these resources and books may seem overwhelming and you definitely don't need to go through all of this material. The key for learning drawing is to figure out what is exciting for you to draw and get over that first hump to get to where you can draw something you see have potential even if it is not great. That's when the momentum builds and it becomes self propelling. Drawing is basically a language for communicating 3d form on a 2d surface, and like learning Spanish the key is just to get enough of a vocabulary that you can get started conversing. The rest follows once you can talk a little.

Well, life drawing is a great way to get work on storing things in your brain you can draw on (!) when you want to construct things from your imagination esp. if anatomical likeness is your goal. However: What I was talking about in my comment was not to recommend any one path to get to drawing from from imagination, it was a lament that the book just does not talk at all about what I am personally getting the most excitement from in drawing: the thrill of the skill of getting things from your head to the page. And you definitely don't need to do classical life drawing to get there. If you look at the Lynda Barry/Ivan Brunetti style of having fun and drawing things from your head where anatomical likeness is not the ultimate goal you clearly can do that without doing a whole lot of life drawing.

As someone that has started to draw from scratch five months ago, I was disappointed by this book. It was basically not much more than a show and tell of pictures he mostly traced of photos and then shaded in pencil in or painted, and a naming of tutorials he watched and classes attended. I would have hoped for something a little less prosaic. There is a lot to talk about regarding the magic of learning to draw (including the fact that anyone can do it, and ruminations on the basic division between observational atelier style drawing vs constructive drawing), and the author completely avoids the thing that is the most brain expanding and thrilling part of drawing which is learning to draw from imagination rather than copying or tracing photos. This is 100% a learnable skill, and it is very addictive when you first start to see things on paper that you had in your head.