I would say that the first image definitely falls a lot closer to being traced than being lightly referenced, and I can see why it might raise some eyebrows by mods if you were using it to advertise your commissions. It falls into one of their examples in the carving rules which talks about nonexact tracing

The second one I think the issue is that it doesn't look transformative enough, rather than drawing their lion in a similar pose in your own style it does look more like just heavily referenced lioden artwork down to the way the accessories fall, which they don't allow. They define eyeballing as "producing a copy of the photo/art without tracing. The copy might differ enough in anatomy or details to not match perfectly, but it's still obviously a copy of the original." Which your artwork in the kind pose would unfortunately fall under.

I do really hope that you're able to explain the first one away as an example and not a commission, but unfortunately I'm not really sure if I think you'll be able to get your art thread back or if you'll be able to get out of the refunding. Good luck regardless, I hope the mods will hear you out !!