So one of the big things about Harold Speed that sets him apart from others is that he's really passionate about what he's writing about, so it's something you often notice. It's a night and day comparison to reading someone like Vanderpoel. This does mean there's more to read but if you will be drawing for several years, I think you can survive a few pages of him talking about greek architecture.
One of the main reasons I really like the book is because it removes a lot when discussing "how" to do something and focuses on getting you to think about things in the right way. So the book isn't a dogma that tells you exactly how to do something, rather it gives you mental tools you can make use of in your own work. Too many books out there just make you draw like the author and maybe that's useful to some, I think most modern books that do that are drawn in a manner that limits someone's ability to explore what drawing is. When I was a student (I mean formally a student) I changed my approach to drawing all the time and the ability to spend a few months just considering form to be all that drawing is concerned with, then the next few months thinking that abstracting everything into light-shape/shadow-shape is all that drawing is, then only caring about the gesture of things, and so on and so on, left me with an appreciation of drawing that I think would be greater than if I had only drawn one way for my entire time there. Harold speed was an important step for me in learning these things. I read that book all the time, I had it with me and I'd read a few pages here and there when the model was on break. His description of mass drawing and line drawing was one of the things that really helped me understand what different ways of drawing were concerned with.
I think it's "line drawing practical" that is probably one of the important chapters when it comes to just understanding drawing. Getting into the habit of blocking-in something with straight lines and being very serious about making it accurate and clearly designed is probably the most important thing you can take away from the book. The later chapters are nice and all that, but just getting serious about the block in is very valuable.
Now if you're self teaching, things are difficult. If you let mistakes creep in or you do things that are unwise, it's harder to fix it. I think complementing Harold Speed with Solomon J. Solomon, someone that has a different approach to drawing, will probably cover most of your bases if you take what is written seriously. Solomon's approach is very interesting and gets around many mistakes people make in the beginning however it lacks a concern for the big impression, something Speed's block in is good at.
He does have another book on painting where there's a similar setup. There are two chapter in particular that summaries his views on paintings and if you only do the things said in those chapters, you're well on your way to make good paintings. The rest is there to complement that very basic approach.
I should probably have posted this earlier but if anyone has questions about these things or needs help, just message me on discord JetJaguar#8954 I don't mind chatting about these things during my free time. I can send step-by step pics of how i make my paintings and also show the mistakes I make (I don't post them here because I don't want to clutter the board with crap). My approach to things is to assume I'm awful at everything and I have to adjust the way I work to consider that. I'm not intuitively good at stuff, when I get lazy and try to do something fancy, I make bad paintings.. so maybe it's easier to understand what is going on because of how simple I do things.
