Yes I have. I'm fairly new to lightwave 9.3, so I'm doing my first steps.
So far I have succeded in doing different things that doesn't require difficult modeling, but the banana strikes me as a difficult one, because of the curves.
I will try to continue as you say from pictures... after all you are right there is always more than one way to skin a cat
(funny I always mention that when i'm teaching photoshop)...
I'll let you know how it works.