really? half of the effort in painting is the actual 'seeing', not putting the paint to the canvas. In fact in art school we would do exercises where we drew from life without ever looking at the paper at all

Yes, but normally he might have pointed his easel at the subject and just leaned or looked over the side to see the subject, for example. Although some of his pieces are very large. The point, though, is that you can make looking more dramatic without increasing or decreasing the amount of looking.

+1. I think anyone could learn to draw from life by reading and do the exercises from this book. The trick is to stop trying to draw symbols ( left brain ) and draw what you actually see ( right brain )

It's for anyone who ever told themselves they can't draw

The book is a marvel. I read the first edition when I was in college and it taught me more than two semesters of basic drawing taught by an indifferent "modern" artist. In most books that try to teach drawing as a mechanical process, as opposed as a purely "creative" exercise, they seem to leave out a "magic" step that makes things possible. Turns out that it isn't magic, but it is fairly subtle. The books makes a process explicit that is too often left to subliminal happenstance.

Don't mistake, the process is still hard, and requires much effort, but it does remove a lot of the magic feather aspect.