I remember my days of pencil art XD
I draw too darkly with pencil and it always got all over my arm and hand >_< (and probably my face..) but when I switched to the blue animation pencils that fixed the mess (not the heavy drawing and too many lines..) So I eventually forced myself to draw in pen and now I mostly stick to digital art XD I still have improvements but the idea is the more you draw, the better you do become :3 (in confidence and skill) So yeah, keep it up, Zane~
Also, I really like the style you used for Marilyn :3 very nice.