I’m not quite sure what it is that you are confused about, so I’ll mention a few things. Feel free to clarify if I misunderstood something. 1. You don’t understand how to make a tapered stroke. Practice drawing simple lines (straight or curved) and try different an amount of pressure pencil has on the paper. A tapered starts off light then increase pressure and then lights up again. The ends should have a faded look to it. Also don’t forget to use your shoulder. I find doing a quick and confident flick of the arm produces a better tapered line then trying to be slow and methodical. 2. You don’t know how to practice tapered lines on shapes Your animals have a nice gesture and flow to them, though your shapes look like you put your pencil down and never lifted it until the shape was finished. The nice thing about tapered lines is you don't have to do everything in one go. For warm-ups I would just draw a circle, but I wouldn’t complete the circle with one stroke. I would only do half or even less and then do a second stroke where the first left off, and keep doing it until the circle was completed. You can try other things more complicated or even something as simple as a line. Draw a line going in any direction that ends in a tapered stroke, begin another line starting where the first line had ended. Take up the entire page drawing swirls and lumps. These aren’t meant to look like a finished piece but they are supposed to look confident. 3. You want to use tapered lines for a more finished project, without the extra lines Tapered lines can help with making your loose sketch look like finished project. For practice I suggest tracing, like Proko did with the turtle. If you have a light box you can you that, or drawing software and tablet. When I was younger I would tape a picture onto a window during a sunny day and place a blank paper over it to trace. Again, this isn't about drawing it all in one stroke, but rather mulitiple lines. However, for this practice try to get the tapered ends to line up properly. I hope that helps some.

You've got pretty solid proportions and line quailty. Your ear looks amazing. Try pushing the differences in your values. Your neck looks like one entire color and I can only see a faint outline of a triangle where it might be a value change. The bright side of the face also looks like just one value. Be bold! Be dramatic! I did a quick overlay of your drawing. It's extremely rough but hopefully you can see the different values clearly. Side note: you also add a middle value under the nose to indicate a plane change. I hoped this helped some. Overall really good drawing, especially for a first attempt.