Hey Chip!
Wanted to post some feedback as well as I can join the others in saying that you're a great part of this community and since I've joined, which was only a few months back, I can definitly tell you've improved.
As others have pointed out your storytelling on this one is cool. There are plenty nice and humerous links in the back and foreground to make the viewer understand what's going on. I think the focal point is pretty clear, and I can tell you've done a lot of work on making the expressions emotive on this one, which is a great improvement on the feedback you received for your 'summer gone wrong' piece.
I can see two main reasons why the contests haven't worked out for you yet.
One is to keep your audience in mind: All three of them are after all children's book illustrators and having heard what has been said on some other pieces, they don't often favour anything too dark, gross or gorish. This is utterly subjective, and might just mean that with another audience you might have more success. Your images are definitly funny, it might just be a bad match.
The second is that I join some others above in saying that your basics just still need some work. You are DEFINITLY on the right path with this, so keep going, practising, taking classes and accepting feedback, because it does just take a long time to improve on the craft and you're on a great upward curve.
Some things that stand out to me with this piece as an example are the colour harmonies. The focal point works great, but the gold of the bacon has such a short radius. No light is reflected on the apple or the other food, and in fact the shadows are all going in the opposite direction from the bacon, making the atmosphere just a bit chopped and confused.
some of the shadows tend a lot towards black and look a little flat. Adding a bit more atmospheric colour into those could also make the shapes better rounded and suited for the scene. I second the Marco Bucci recommendation! Really good video!
The characters are a little stiff. You're getting there, but I'd recommend doing more studies of the real animals in different poses (same for humans) and practising a big bunch of gesture drawing to get some fluidity into them. They just don't quite look like they could be real moving and living characters.
Composition could use a little work but this is a harder one to pin down and more intuitive. The wolf is cropped awkwardly at the top, and all the pigs are bunched together and overlap in places maybe a little awkwardly. I also think the items on the table are all so seperate that they just look glued on without providing much aid for the eye. Maybe they could have overlapped and helped point towards the focal point.
That was long! Hope some of that was helpful. Everyone feels discouraged when it comes to their art, and it can feel so often that you are just working into a void and nothing is coming back out of it, but you ARE improving, and your evident love for art is going to bring you back to try again and again until you WILL succeed. If you are discouraged with SVS contests specifically, there is no shame in taking a break from them and working on some studies and sketches leisurely until you feel up to it again!
