I have to confess that I sometimes wonder whether 'real' artists do manage to reproduce the picture as they saw it in their head, because I know I hardly ever do. If I'm lucky, I end up with something else that looks okay - but it's rarely the thing that I imagined it would be.

I feel ambiguous about "how to" books. I keep buying them because I feel the need to know how things work, but in the end I tend stubbornly to go my own way. That probably shows ;).