Meeting new people and building relationships with them is one of THE most important skills you can have in life. Once you get a bit better at drawing, having a group of people to both support you and point out the flaws in your art work is very important. You might miss a flaw in your art completely that someone else can see more apparently. A group of friends who are also artist will go along way in motivating you to draw as well.

As you are 9, every year you age you will simply naturally get better as long as your drawing atleast a little bit. But don't let being limited by your age stop you. There are better artist than me who are around your age.

For the shadows and faces I'll just link you the videos I personally like.

https://youtu.be/8SZONs9hiRc?si=AZfs4EzNPV1-jqKp

That guy has a bunch of other good tutorials if you want to learn aswell.

Also since you are drawing with your fingers on here, make sure to zoom in to have better looking lines.