Love this! Nice clean exploration of simplification.

I think you've got some fun stories and character in these guys! Don't be afraid to give them rolls like the Michelin man. That would give you a little more depth and some fun places to put the cross-contour lines too.

Good ellipse explorations! You seem to be putting the exercise to great use. For a couple, it looks like you did slow down on the marks and ended up with some wavy ellipse sides. You don't have to whip your arm around at crazy speeds or anything but when you slow down, you'll get less smooth lines and have that shakyness to it. I think my favorite here is the one towards the top of the first page with the 4 and 5 identified on it. It kinda looks like little legs gaga

there's some good simplification going on here! You've made some specific choices while laying it in with straights that are solid. I appreciate that in some areas, your simplification was applied seemingly with the intention to prioritize what was and was not important to the overall piece. I do think that you've got some proportion issues in here that make it feel like the nose is too far over. But it seems like the nose is too small, overall. One thing I found handy with his face is that the nose itself was a really good tool for sight measuring. Try comparing the size of the nose you initially lay in to to other parts of the drawing. We can see that from bridge to base of the nose is about the same as the measurement from bottom of lip to bottom of the chin (under the beard). checking relative proportion like this helps a lot. Keep sharing what you make with the lessons! I like what you've got going so far!

Seconding Martha! Without having been there to see the model, we can only assume. But a general assumption would say that his head in relation to his other limbs and torso probably wasn't that large. A fun thing to do with life drawing is to pick a specific thing to study with the session. It could be worthwhile to do quick sketches one day, rendering on another or other more specific challenges, I think you, overall, have a good grasp on some core art concepts and would love to see you try to hone in on and focus on a couple things, starting from the broadest like proportions before trying to apply them all at once.

I think you might be in a spot where you're moving ahead with details before getting your proportions in place. We've all done it! Getting those proportions in first will help you way more than it might realize at first. I think you've got some good things going on here! Your lines aren't all scratchy, so you can make a line with a confidence and that's GREAT. But there are some big differences between your drawing and the refence. The hat on the guy is actually pretty tall, being about the height of the area of his face from the mouth to the top of the visible forehead. You're is very short. And the area between the bridge of his nose and the eye on the left of the photo is small but in your drawing is wider than that space for the right eye. Putting that shine in the eye in the reward after we've done a lot of the rest of the work. Making sure you do things in order proportions, to blocking in shadow and highlight areas before starting detailing will make you happier with your results and make the time you put into drawing more useful. I look forward to seeing more of what you make in the future!

I especially like the bottom left one on this page. The tilt of the head with that kind of backwards ben and extension is a really important element to sell that pose.

I definitely understand that urge! Drawing is fun and the act of whittling away at a piece can be its own reward sometimes. Your line quality feels pretty good in most places and you don't seem to be having too hard of a time with massive erasing and replacing areas. But don't be afraid to acknowledge where some parts aren't right, either. Looking at the penguin's outer arm, it's lower than the other. Depending on the purpose of your drawing, proportion and placement may come second to designing. The same goes for the hand here. You did GREAT job on the middle two fingers. They feel pinched and appropriately curved. Those fingers come to some sharp points, though. If you end up choosing to design shapes in this way on purpose, having the thumb and pinky be pointy while the index comes to a box tip would make them all flow a little bit more.

These are solid! One thing I'd suggest is getting your initial sketch in with simple, light lines before going in and trying to push shapes. You'll see it all over the lessons in this course and Stan's videos in general. On your rooster, the wattle under the rooster's neck feels a little more droopy than the reference. This can come from you trying to communicate a few different things but if you get that initial shape in at the start, then you can push and pull your final lines without having to worry about the overall suggestion of the form changing. Keep sharing your progress! I'd love to see it.

I think your values across all of these are pretty solid. the only think that I think ends up reading more pronounced that you'd be looking for if the cheek on the left side of the drawing. While the reference does have a shadow that goes through that area, the big leap from the lighter value to the darker one makes that plane change feel even more steep. In your earlier thumbnail sketch, you suggested a break in that shadow area and that communicated that plane change while not giving so harsh of an impression. That being said, that shadow side of the face is rendered gorgeously, with delicate details and a great family of values.