On learning through "copying"

[Agilix]

BUT, I will say this. Jack Kirby once said he learned how to draw by copying others. When he didn't know how to draw a hand, he took some other comic artist's hand, studied it, and made it his.

And that describes exactly what I meant :)

I do concur with the rest of your argument about going even further from reality but in Kirby's case it seemed to work.
And again, it's really about studying how they build the object and learning from that :)

Now I do not say I wouldn't study from the old masters and so, but I hope this will, in part, lighten the heaviness of studying.
Though your tip is gonna help a lot as well as it will give a certain goal to which the studies will be used on :)