@Brody-Willard Hi there, and thanks for sharing your work with us! I thought I might offer some feedback on the "chalky" look you've mentioned. I think there are a few contributing factors to this, and I'll list them below using the cat with the ramen piece as an example:
Color saturation - Especially on this one, all of your colors are desaturated which will lend the image to an ashy or washed out look. When I pulled this image into Photoshop and color picked, nothing went over the halfway line in terms of saturation.
Values - Others have mentioned this, but values can be tricky but they are essential to creating an image that moves the viewer's eye where you want it to go and adds contrast and depth to an illustration. Know where to use your extremes, the darkest dark and lightest light, strategically.
Texture - Again others mentioned this, but if everything looks like it was done with a large standard Photoshop round brush, it's going to look somewhat generic and unfinished. Experiment with some brushes, download some if you don't want to make your own.
Detail - Although there is definitely a wide range of levels of detail from one illustration style to the next, adding little details always helps with polish, assuming there is a good base drawing in place, otherwise it's just building on top of a poor foundation. I like to think of an illustration like building a house, start with the big things and then move in to the smaller. Have a good base drawing, figure out values, block in color, add drop large areas of contrast and light, then move to smaller texture, highlights, etc.
Below I did a quick paintover, or rather just took what you had and used it as a base color block in then took it a little further. You could definitely keep refining this if you wanted, but I just wanted to show what a difference a few techniques could make. Here's a summary:
-Brought levels down a little so that I could add highlights. Will has said it before, if you start really light there's nowhere to go when you want to add more light. I usually start with my base color block in a little dark so that I can both go darker or lighter.
-Drop shadows like on the noodles, help to define shapes so they don't glob together.
-Material and texture. Another thing that makes the original look "chalky" is that all of the different elements seem to have the same specularity, or shinyness, to them. Ramen is wet, eggs are shiny, the bowl is hard and defining the rim makes it look more so. Think about how the different surfaces in the scene will respond to the light. Also the ramen is hot and would steam. Little touches can go a long way to make something feel more finished.
Looong response, but hope it helps!
0_1471371538379_ramen.jpg
