A flash of the blue chicken

This started off as a bouncing ball practice in flash, then I got bored and wanted to do something else, so I tried to turn the ball into a chicken..

Paint paint paint

I've been trying out some digital painting recently. Some are done from picture reference and some are just imaginary. I'm quite disappointed with how it turned out. They all look plastic. There must be something I'm doing wrong but I don't know what it is yet and it's frustrating =(