Picasso Lesson: Reduction to Abstract

Reducing an image to it's fewest essential lines has always been a challenge for me.
This Artyfactory article illustrates a progression in thinking.

Pablo Picasso created 'Bull' around the Christmas of 1945. 'Bull' is a suite of eleven lithographs that have become a master class in how to develop an artwork from the academic to the abstract. In this series of images, all pulled from a single stone, Picasso visually dissects the image of a bull to discover its essential presence through a progressive analysis of its form. Each plate is a successive stage in an investigation to find the absolute 'spirit' of the beast.
From this

To this