Hi there,
I took to making a more "artistic," less spritey approach to show some things.
The first thing to visit is always the general forms:
I tried to over-exaggerate the shapes I saw.
I blocked out the main components, but I wasn't trying to be exact, just to get some sweet shapes to work with.
For the head in particular I changed some angles to give me shapes that work well with pixel art (the mouth in particular requires too much noise to get right at the original angle).
With hands and feet (and any difficult parts) I generally just plop down some pixels and see what cool shapes naturally form and then refine them.
Then I just yolo copied the reference:
This is a case of
draw the rest of the owl, but there are some key points to note:
I chose bold colours. No pussy-footing about with a couple of similar greys here. Don't get me wrong, this went poorly at first and went through a few iterations, but you can't be afraid of trying lots of contrast and saturation.
I didn't use outlines to break up my forms, I used key dark areas. This is a lot to ask, but you need to always try think of ways to imply form without giving it away. Again this is often just me making the whole thing dark and then drawing cool shapes where I want them to be and then toning things down at the end.
Finally the silhouette (in grey):
This is where the feeling really lies. You want your silhouettes to look good. The rest is also important of course, but if your silhouette doesn't move you, you're not going to go anywhere fast.
The main thing I'm trying to say is overdo it rather than play it safe.
You'll learn more by trying more things, and messing up is part of the process. You can't get too serious, or hung up on perfection; just have fun. ^^