This is the biggest hurdle for those with a 'I can't draw a stick figure if my life depended on it' attitude. Hand drawing takes a lot of practice and determination to get past the initial 'this looks like sh' stages..

I agree with you as far as the experience and the analysing of shapes goes... and yes... the next step after reading the tutorials should be to go and play with the shapes and create something new, experiment and find your own way of doing things. From some of the feedbacks I received that is happening for quite a few users that go through the steps and then turn the simple circles into an owl, a tiger or a dragon. Something they would not have created from scratch with pen and paper as they lacked the self esteem and believe in their art creation skill.

I tried to go a different way in the tutorials to give the readers a simple approach towards 'constructing' elements from basic building blocks - rather than struggle with perspective and proportion.