Mountain critique and advice

[AllEvilLaughter]

Looking for some advice on this piece, it's part of a bg image for a game. I'm finding it hard to capture the feel of a mountain.
As you can see I mainly created it by scribbling in Gale now I'm going over it adding pixel level detail.

[PypeBros]

'feel' of the mountain is in its volume and its volume will be reconstructed out of its shading. Do you have any reference picture you're working from ?

[AllEvilLaughter]

Thanks for the reply!
I'll try add more shadowing to give the read of the landscape.
No I'm not working from a reference, I've just being throwing stuff at a wall so to speak. I'll also look of some pics and post back later with the results.

[Hideon]

Good start, that random lines make it look a bit strange but I understand it's because is a sketch. I really want to see how will you continue.

I recomend you to change the black (0, 0, 0) to a dark gray, brown, purple, blue or something. I think it's better on pixelart to use a not-black dark color. And the colors in general could be better, with that gray I don't know if there is snow or it's the rock.

Edit:
Just if you want an advice to do the rock... I recomend you to start with the simplest thing possible, for example this:
http://s15.postimage.org/xk0v9cy6z/rockthing01.png
Then insert shadows (I'm sure you know how to do it better than me)
http://s17.postimage.org/c8gsrre3z/rockthing02.png
To make the "feel of the mountain" it's good to do it with blocks.
http://s15.postimage.org/48y783dwb/rockthing03.png
And then just pixel each block separately to add rock details.
http://s15.postimage.org/jyizj5r17/rockthing04.png

Something like this. Now with the trees and the sky I don't know what you want exactly

[AllEvilLaughter]

Thats an amazing post Hideon, a lot to absorb!
I'm going to practice a few mountains now, then go back and try the piece.

[AllEvilLaughter]

About time I got around to posting an update, been doing a lot of practice and slowly learning. These aren't finished pieces, I'm still just trying things out to improve, but this is so far.
You can see I went overboard on dithering this one, better at using clusters now I hope.



And a few pieces of terrain in slow progress





And an old screenshot of the game currently (beginning stages):




Edit: Linked wrong image

[Hideon]

So it definitely was snow, not rock
The random lines still not convence me, and the dithering with that colors looks like noise.
You can make it with lines but try to do it smooth.
The shadows on the snow are so much smooth than the shadows on the rock. It's a background so make the colors a bit insaturated.

Here a related topic:
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=12921.0