How can I improve this?

[Spirit]

I am pretty new to pixel art, and new to this forum and decided to work on this this morning.



I have limited myself to working with only 5 colours so that I can learn to make more with less. With this piece I am trying to make a tiny wandering wizard in monochrome. There are 4 things I have struggled with defining here and would like some advice/tips and maybe even an example.

• The hand holding the torch
• The torch
• The staff on his back
• The shading of his robe

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I can't seem to get the image to display... However clicking on the broken image redirects you to this imgur page "http://imgur.com/a/99ff9"

[MysteryMeat]

Try reloading it. Imgur has been dodgy of late, may have to dump it for something like anonkun

[Spirit]

Okay... fixed the link!

... I needed to add .png to the url :I

[PixelFixation]

I'm pretty new myself but i'd say for the robe take the whole thing down one shade as the "base" shade then reshade it with with white highlights and darker gray/black shadows.

[abcnocturn]

Also a newbie, but one problem I had with this image is the light source :/
Is it frontal ?
If it is, the the front of the head robe should be bright too.

I did some testing with the hand/head/robe , and used the torch as a frontal-top-right light source.
I'm happy with the head and hand, but messed up the robe.
Maybe it helps a littlebit ?