Yeah, to be honest, you really would benefit a lot from listening to your professors on that, especially if you're doing figure drawing. You've done a hell of a lot with photography, but drawing from life is a bit different. It's really important you develop that as a skill though, see.
For starters, a photograph has flattened out the image for you. Sounds like a good thing until you consider that, unless you've lost an eye, you have binocular vision. You see two images which combine to form depth. So, when you learn to draw from life you are learning to combine two different images into your drawing. My drawing prof can actually pick out drawing studies done from life from ones done from a photo. Yours are nicely rendered, don't get me wrong, but they have a certain flatness and thing about the lighting which is characteristic of photo drawings.
Gesture drawings are an excellent exercise as well. Ya gotta do em! Seriously, it will look bad but it's not supposed to be a final product, ever. It's about developing control over your whole arm (all the way to your shoulder) to make continuous lines, getting down the dynamic movements of the figure, and just getting you ready to start drawing more seriously.
Also, when you are drawing from life, you are developing a much more intimate knowledge of the forms. Not every mark you put on the paper has to be exactly what you see. Someone who has mastered drawing regularly reinterprets what she sees in order to make it more real. It's not about being able to reproduce a flat image but instead to create an image which communicates everything important to the viewer. And not only does that mean addition or careful exaggeration, it also means leaving out those things which are not important and distracting.
For realz. If you compare a photograph of a figure with a master drawing of it, the drawing will be better. The drawing will more clearly articulate the dynamics of the pose, the workings of the musculature and bone under the skin, the edges of the forms...everything. The important parts will be more defined and the confusing bits made clear.
So yeah :) You've already got an excellent base, you should be ready to dig in deep. Important thing is to not think you have a "style" yet. Not until you work with all of them! Learn to do line drawings, no shading at all, and get those forms to overlap with the quality of your line. 022 is a good example of why that'd be important for you. The forms aren't clearly delineated from the others. Knowing how to control your line with your shading will let you define them as you need to and interpret the forms for your viewer.
Don't get me wrong, you've got excellent control already. But you need to learn what to articulate and what to leave ambiguous or leave out entirely. Getting away from the photograph would be the best thing for you. Learn to simplify and interpret. Learn to leave things out. It will make your drawings more able to invade the viewers space and make the forms more dynamic and in-motion as it were.
*Minor editing done
