Not sure why the screen shot is like that. Im using photoshop and have Image interpolation it set to Nearest Nieghbor seems to work well with scaling up images. Not sure why my screenshot looks blurry.

Your screenshot is blurry because it's a jpeg. I'm not sure if it was the host automatically converting your screenshot into jpg but either way, it's a bad file format for pixel art. To make it more easier for others, I've looked at your game for a bit and pulled a couple of screenshots in PNG format.

I paint the image at a small scale to give it that edgey pixelated look. When I try to paint on a larger canvas the style is gone because the edges look to smooth. Whats your thoughts?

Here is the game.

www.dwbailey.com/images/squirrelnutsProduction.exe

It would help if the art style was consistent. The text is not blocky but is rather 'smooth' instead. Our main hero isn't made of giagantic rectangles while the background is definitely made of big blocky rectangles. There are a number of elements that are rotated. Rotated, skewed pixels like what you find a lot on the second screenshot looks weird because everything else is made of squares, not rotated squares. The acorn net is a weird combination of blocky and blurry. It was animated with the help of a transformation tool that creates a lot of antialiasing that creates a level of blur that looks out of place in our game world.


I also noticed the enormous resolution of 1024x768. A tiny resolution like 256x224, one used by the SNES is already more than enough pixels for an artist to be able to draw something. Only thing is if your programming knowledge goes far enough to be able to get the game to scale the screen by a factor of a whole number. Pixel art is much easier to make at smaller resolutions as well. Working too big is probably the most common mistake a pixel artist would make. I see possibilities of a blocky, rectangular style working out but it doesn't seem to be a style that's easy to do especially not for artists starting out. I would either follow Cy's advice to redraw your stuff in your intended resolution, or just go with a smaller resolution so you will still get your blocky aesthetic but benefit from a more consistent resolution.

White background? 

IMO it's harder to think of criticism with these tiles if we don't see how they are used in practice, probably what's most important.  Think you can make a mockup to show us how these sprites and tiles are used? It will also greatly help the presentation of these assets as well.

Hours and hours? Here's a tip to make things faster: work with a smaller canvas size. 

350x566 has more or less 198100 pixels in it. If you work at 64x64, there are only 4096 pixels.

So not exact 16x16 tiles, but rather elements that can tile together and be re-used?

Don't think of your tiles as tiles. If possible, try to draw them as a scene over a grid. This way, I find that I am more conscious of how my tiles look in practice, and I find that it helps avoid making tiles that don't tile well, and in general make stuff that kinda reveals a tile grid. You could probably draw a 128x64 section of wall over a 16x16 grid if you want, if you're up to working that large.