@ossobuco,
True. Although as i recall, I learned to draw horses and later human figures from books that taught how to break down the underlying shapes. A book by a spiderman comic artist taught me about foreshortening. I remember I went a long way with a drawing pad copying the drawings in that book. Decades later, that's still part of how I draw.
Faces I learned to draw by doodling them incessantly. A physics teacher once caught me in the middle of class doodling charicatures of him. He was pleased, though.
When it comes to painting faces, there are a couple of angles on catching a likeness... one I still use is noticing the space between the pupils of the eyes, then notice the point right at the middle of the base of the nose. Now you have a triangle. Get that triangle right and you've pretty much got the likeness.