You are far from hopeless with pencil...In fact you are pretty close. What I would point out is you need to use more prominent contour lines...I made this 30 min sketches as study for production design...you can see what I mean there. Feng Zhu said when you start studying animals, start with large mammals without fur and repties (easiest), than some insects/arthropods, marine animals, skulls, skeletons, than animals with hair, feathers and fur which is a bit harder... Keep it up! You are pretty good actually.