[jcl]

If you want to learn to draw from life, the biggest hurdle is learning to interpret visual signals directly -- what artists refer to as "learning to see". Your brain naturally wants to turn visual input (edge, color, pattern) into higher-level concepts ("house", "nose", "cat", etc.), which is wonderful for general survival but unhelpful when this interpretive step inserts itself in the path from your eyes to your pencil.

However, there are a variety of exercises you can do to learn to see low-level visual input over higher-level interpretations, like copying images upside-down, following a visual edge with both eye and pencil, using a viewfinder or grid to narrow attention, measuring angles/distances between landmarks, moving attention to "negative space", etc.

You can find these kinds of exercises in most life drawing books. I particularly like "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", as it's structured for independent study, it has a focus on quickly producing results for absolute novices, and it has a scientific bent -- although anything it says about physical neurological structure should be taken with a grain of salt.