Good job, keep it up!

These look great!

Nice! I think the right jaw line is a little too steep and should be rounded a bit more. Other than that, fantastic work. Great line quality, too!

I like the looseness you are getting into your sketching line quality, very well done and in the spirit of the assignment, though I would suggest keeping your lines lighter when they are looser, and using a dark line only until the end when you have found a more exact line that you want to use to finalize the drawing. This way, less lines are competing against each other and there's more clarity to the final sketch. I also see that you're breaking the reference down into larger sections before going into the details, and I think you can take this a bit further by breaking it down into entire shapes, like drawing a rectangle for the VR girl's torso or a circle for the penguin's head. This can add more stability and structure as you lay the foundation for your drawing. Hope this helps!

Good shape simplification, though try lightening your light values, especially #2 & #3 (counting lightest to darkest). Right now they seem closer to the shadow values in terms of darkness, whereas even differences across all 5 steps will provide a more clear and 3-dimensional range in your drawing. You can even try out a 5 step value scale beforehand to map out the values and use as reference.