So not wanting to accept defeat, I took a pic of myself and ran it through a filter so that now it looks like a sketch and i am trying to duplicate it by hand to see if i can, and develop an eye for drawing
Get the book...trust me. I first used it back in high school and I am still using the lessons I learned from it to this day.
What you are trying to do on your own is actually one of the lessons. The trick is to place the source image upside down and copy it by hand that way. It forces your brain to focus on the spacial relationships, colors and tones rather than the content of the image.
The first time I followed the lesson of using my non-dominant hand to draw an image and found it turned out better than the same one using my dominant hand...I was blown away.