If I may offer something, I take this as the "okay, what do we have here?" part of my process. It lets me make sense of what I'm looking at in terms of what the model or reference is maybe just hinting at, and allows me to build up my own intuition, and trust that my eyes are seeing what they are seeing. From there, I can push the hints in the direction of what I want to say. I've only been doing this for a few months now, and feel confident in what I've learned so that when I sit down to look at things I like, understand how to make those myself. Now, if you're someone who already sees well or has an intuition already built up, it may not serve you to go to this level. Some folks can just get right to business in their own way and create something magical. What Michael is giving us, from my point of view, is a structured way to analyze what we see in terms of an idea which we eventually get to translate to the illustration once we are confident that we have what we're looking for to say what we want to say.

He's got the Figure Construction course that starts with gesture and he builds up from that to rendering.

Hi, Ron! I come from formal Art Academy training where art is turned into a science, and at the end of the degree students become very radicalized; some despise it completely, others forget why the do art and lose their mojo. Marshal's approach to this course is to keep us engaging with the formal learning but in a creative, intuitive way. I notice that he would post a vague homework to get the students to do something, with no deep explanation (which makes me feel uncomfortable). Then he would post the actual explanation with a more in depth clarification of what is expected. As a student my first urge is to blame it on the teacher as 'sloppy teaching'. I vent it out, get over it, and just do it. I can see the self awareness value coming out of these: Get to work with almost no understanding. These uncomfortable exercises with open endings turned out the most valuable lessons on critical, self analysis thinking. His approach to this course is challenging to the way all the other courses of Perspective are done, and this why is so valuable to go through it. He talks about it in the Draftsmen Podcast if you need that extra understanding on the logic to the madness. Anyway, I totally understand where you are coming from and wanted to give you a pat on the shoulder. At the same time I trust Marshal and his extensive knowledge on the subject of teaching and learning, and I am in for the ride regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me feel. That means I need to stretch myself and give it try. Sometimes I get nothing out of some homework, other demos are just brilliant and get me excited about tackling a particular approach. Regardless of my internal resistance, I vowed myself to play full in, even when it gets uncomfortable. I hope my sharing helps a little bit with how you are feeling right now.

You're never going to learn how to draw boxes unless you actually set one up and draw it from many different locations. This is the only way perspective is going to make any sense to you too.