you need to check if your brush has pressure sensitivity as well as your stylus (if you are not using apple pencil), you may also want to check your pressure and smoothing setting, maybe something there is messing with your taper

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.

Looks very nice! Super confident I wish I could be so confident in my anime stuff

Po: Monkey, Mantis, Crane, Viper, Tigress, RAAAAAHHHH—!

I have the same thing! It has been a while since you posted this, so did you find a way to practice the taper at the beginning of your stroke as well? It would be great to hear your experience. Thank you! Wendy

Sorry if it seems a little overwhelming with the amount of images, you don’t have to look at it if it overwhelms your senses.