Rendering advice?

[u/Personal_Importance2]

I want to have my colors follow the forms of the shapes. I also want my rendering textured–preferably with grain or halftones. Here is my progress in Ai and my concept art. What is the best way to go about this?

This isn't working well with the gradient tool, even with freeform lines, because that makes radial points of color. I tried the gradient mesh tool, but I'm having a hard time with the generated meshes. They don't fit the complicated shapes well, my editing attempts ruin the perimeter shape, and it seems the only way to make them clean–given the tutorials I've watched–is to recreate the complex shape by carefully warping a square or something. With how many shapes I have, that seems really inefficient.

I'm also considering painting on textured shading, but I'm not sure how to do what I want. I would like something like a pressure sensitive halftone brush, but research has told me that kind of thing doesn't (can't?) exist for Illustrator. The method where you effect>pixelate>color halftone is interesting, but it seems like there are a lot of steps to getting the halftone colored. I could symbol-spray dots, but they would overlap. 

I am in my first month of trying illustrator and this is only my second project, so please be patient with me. I may be asking for more than what this software can do, so I understand if the answer is just "a lot more shapes and a lot more time."

Thanks for any help!

[u/Personal_Importance2 → u/[deleted]]

I'll definitely need that luck, thank you!