Actually your drawing looks really nice, you even managed to get a good likeness. The issue you are having is "seeing" the values correctly. For example: you rendered the hair dark- that's good- but if you look at the reference, the shadow on the side of his face is as dark as the hair. You rendered it too light. The left eye is almost completely lost in the shadow, but you rendered it much lighter. This is very common with beginners so don't feel bad about it, just make sure you compare the values you are rendering with other values in the image. Hope that helps :)

What a lot of people have done, like you, is forget to put in the background value. This is important because it helps you judge all the other values, especially those in the light. Notice the highlights don't pop because they are the same value as the background. If you had included the value for the background, the highlights would be more visible. Having said that, you did a nice job on the pear :)

I’m not a teacher or anything so don’t quote me, but maybe what is meant by these types of phrases is to build an image mentally of what you are drawing. Before you put pencil to paper think of what your subject would look in 3D and how you could indicate that correctly with lines and shading. It helps some to imagine a rubber band being wrapped around forms to get an idea of its dimension. If it’s a struggle to picture things that way then maybe real life objects you can hold/see will help, try to picture how a line would wrap around it, even draw lines around them and observe it that way. Like I said, don’t take my word for it though.

I can’t help with your problem specifically sorry but I can tell you that I’m struggling with this too! so you’re not alone :)

Hello :) I’m new around here but don’t take it easy on me! how can I improve please? Any feedback appreciated! Ty