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Jeff,
You'll not often see a highly-resolved finish in an instructional video, unless there's a lot of time-lapse skipping, which I find more annoying than having the demo end "too early".
I believe you cited in another thread a website drawing tutorial, which I scanned at the time and saw that the instructor wrote disparagingly of presumptive proportions and archetypical landmarks and forms. Now, thankfully, you've seen a different perspective, and you'll have to decide for yourself which is the more useful approach. As you will have heard Daniel Greene say, he calls the measurements "presumptions" because it's where he begins, just to begin somewhere. The instant he notices that the subject before him differs from those presumptions, he modifies his drawing. (This is the element that detractors have to omit from their reviews of his procedure.) Unless one is weaving artwork from the whole cloth of imagination, representational work is, first and finally, a matter of a series of comparisons of what you see "in nature" (which, yes, may mean trees and frogs, but I mean it to signify whatever object in real life that you're attempting to portray) to what you have on your easel or drawing board, and making corrections.
In Greene's pastel video, you'll see the same attention to drawing, and you'll see that once he's finished his first go round, he goes back in and restates and redraws, because he knows corrections are in order. And he continues to correct as needed, all the way to the end.
You've indicated a couple of times on the Forum your desire to get drawings done quickly. That's fine for scribble drawings (one of my all-time favorite exercises, and almost never mentioned by anyone), gesture drawings, and rapid life studies for which the model will become quickly unavailable. I've found that I can do a very nice 12" x 9" figure drawing in high key graphite in six hours -- and no less. That's not a "rule", it's my personal limitation. I'd rather have nine hours. (Think about that, though. I'm only asking for one workday to complete a fine piece of artwork. What's the value in asking for less?) The same figure in, say charcoal in a 30" x 24" format, and a high degree of finish in both figure and background will probably require at least 80 hours. More in pastel, even more in oil. Maybe I'll never get rich at that pace, but I won't have stuff out there that embarrasses me.
Wait a little while, watch the video again, then try it out on your own easel. Will it result in magic the first time out? Nope. But you'll be pretty impressed with yourself by the fifth or sixth attempt. You'll even begin to "forget" that Greene taught you this. [Though, if you're not working from life, then much of this is moot, except as a review guide in assessing even work from photos.] Then buy his pastel video (even if you don't "do" pastels, but if you're not sold on that, get the oil video.) You'll get some lessons in color and color procedure there, to go on top of a review of the drawing practice and protocols.
An aside: Isn't New Iberia where James Lee Burke (a fantastic writer) places some of his cop/PI stories? Also in Montana, my home stamping grounds.
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