I am working on a student film and we are trying to get a “pseudo-cel shading” look. By that I mean that we don't want the lighting and shading to be hyper-realistic, but we don't want to have flat, hard edged toon shaders either. We want to find a balance in between the two (see attached image) but I feel super lost as to where to start.
Specifically, I am wondering how to achieve the fairly flat, white highlights and how to get the ‘chalky’/'speckled' transition between the light and the shadow areas.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

You can achieve a more painterly look by stepping, recoloring and offsetting a shaders illumination based on a stained texture, custom color ramps and curves.