The Body 2
Start BLENDER, load the guide image as background, and make a scene setup, to easily view the object at all sides. Add 3 colored spot lamps, one at 3/4 front, one at opposite side, and one in the back. Do the same with cameras. One, face of the object, one at the side and one in the back. Later you can refine this to give a nice light to your model.
In 3d window, in Front view, press Space, in the pop-up menu choose "Add-Mesh-Sphere", with 8 Segments and 6 Rings, it's a good compromise "beauty-weight".
The "beauty-weight" compromise means to me, smoothness of the model versus number of polygons. If you want a real low-poly model ( around 300/500 polys), decrease the number of Segments-Rings .
Make an instance of the sphere, Mirror it, S-X, and place it like in the image. With this setup, when you enter Edit Mode, and you change the vertices of one sphere, the modifications will occur automatically in the other one.
In Side view, Select the vertices at the right of the median line and Delete them. Delete the top vertice either.
In Front view, Select the low row of vertices and Extrude one time ( see image above).
In Side view, enter Edit mode, select all the vertices, and move them over the model ( if necessary). Select one row and Extrude back. Adjust the vertices to fit the model.
With the Open Gl shade mode, it's easy to Extrude and Build faces directly in trackball view ( perspective).