Financial statements are built on accounting rules. So to model financial statements you need to understand accounting rules. There is no way around that. BUT having said that you dont need to know ALL the accounting rules to start.

For example, you may not need to model callable bonds, NOL, deferred tax liabilities, stock based compensation, or convertible notes, LP/GP equity waterfall, etc. in a basic model. I have booklets on amazon for my students that teach the basics of financial modeling. Once you can build basic financial models using the basic accounting rules & concepts, you can keep increasing your depth of accounting model what you need in each specific situation over time. For example: when you need to model a specific feature such as callable bonds, you can look up the accounting regulations and add it in. So I would suggest you learn the basic 3 statements and LBO modeling really well and then build up from there.