first till the last couple days I have never hatched a day in my life. I found the dog leg lesson and thought I would give it a shot and see if I could put what I learned to practice. till now Ive just been doing balls and scales ect.

the first pic has 2 the small one is the first one I did the larger is the second and the 1 by itself is the 3rd. I have realized I do better if I make my drawings larger.

just need to know what you guys think. is it over or under worked? how are my lines? my highlights an shading? are they improving or getting worse? I know I am botching the paw. I will prob do some of just the paw to get some extra practice. also I did no tracing or griding just fallowed the directions on how to draw it freehand.

I am considering a set of mechanical pencils to help keep a sharp tip when doing stuff like this bc I has the worst time trying to keep my pencils sharp

any input on what I need to work on to make it better would be most helpfull

I think they're quite good. To take these further yes, you'd want to keep your pencils sharp, first of all; also you can try to vary the line weights more, probably by using a variety of pencils. Using some softer (darker) pencils in parts would give these a lot more impact.