I seem to always find myself agreeing to Tripp's comments in various journals! But I agree that the prompts are a little overwhelming. Not just the number of prompts, but they seem a little too involved to be considered a quick exercise. At least for me. And though I do love to draw portraits, I always get very involved when I attempt people, and am just not cut out to sketch them. I don't know why. I consider drawing people to be rather difficult, so for simple exercises, I'd rather see much easier prompts. But then again, maybe I'm just lazy, or scared, or both.
So; answer to#1 is Both. Not much time recently ( participating in fandom fests) and prompts not really working for me.
#2 I'd like to see more free form prompts as well as just easy stuff like animals or objects. For instance: draw a favorite animal at rest, and then in action. Or an object under different types of lighting, or to portray different moods. Or 3 unusual uses for ordinary object. Or even abstract or semi-abstract arrangements.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd like to see the prompts more simple in scope, so they'd seem less like projects to me. And I haven't really had time to check out much of the links, but they do look interesting.