Made a very quick and shoddy edit just to illustrate a few points:

O! Thanks, Cels I've been doing "art" since I was a kid, but I've never had proper lessons or looked into anything. It's a passion, but for the greater majority of my life I've been ignorant to the actual learning part -_- And now at 21 I'm sort of paying for that, I guess. But I want to get into actually learning. And this is really helpful! Thank you I'll try to re-apply those principles to the original and see if anything magical happens.

Also! I just noticed that there's a small band of bright at the bottom ridge of the umbrella... is there any reason for that or was that part of putting it together fast?

I'm open to constructive (and preferably kind) criticism... but I'm not a fan of harsh or stoney criticism. Give me a pillow, dammit!!!!
Anyway... In all seriousness, I used to futz about with pixel art before I had access to the internet and could learn such wonderful things I didn't realize were legitimate art forms. At the time I worked with simple geometry to make what would have been used for avatars. To be honest, I didn't even know what an avatar was at the time, I just liked making heads out of pixels ^u^ (sadly I don't have them anymore...)
That aside, though, I stopped working with pixels for a long time, and recently just... boom... I decided to try it again and I'm getting into it quite nicely! And now with the wonders of the internet (and a more focussed adult mind), I'm actually doing something with it!!!! Though I'm not sure what level I'm at right now. I'd like to imagine I'm slightly above mediocre... but that's unlikely. So anything constructive would be greatly appreciated

The first finished pixel work was a very basic lady in pink in a 32x32 square. This is pretty much a rip-off practice of something I saw in a tutorial video (to which I do not have a link). Though the tutorial was for a robed wizard in purple holding a staff with a glowing green gem. ... I just followed a similar principle for practice. It's still neat in my opinion! But I'd like your thoughts on what I could/should have done differently.


The next was just a cute little squirrel that happened on accident. For the record, most of my stuff will start as accidents.


My next finished work (which I think still needs help with shading, but it's one of my best shaded ones so far in my opinion) is a mushroom! It's actually based on a drawing I did. I sketched it, scanned it and colored it in my computer. The original is from April 2014, but the pixel version was made like a week ago. I started out tracing over a minimized version, but then I tweaked it to make it more ... mushroomy?
I'm may or may not edit this further, but I will say that I know i need to work on using shading to express the depth of the pockets in the umbrella... I also probably should have used that tan color to outline the pocket on the top instead of using red...


After that I got fancy and decided to try taking inspiration from a work I admire. There is a band I love called The Moon and the Nightspirit, and I am in love with the album art for their album Rego Rejtem. I tried translating a portion of it into pixels! I did not trace; I put them side-by-side and drew it from scratch. In any case, if you're interested in a reference, search google.


And my latest image is of a dragon... or a pterodactyl (you decide) resting on a rock. ... Again it started as an accident, but if it means anything to you, the end product hardly incorporates the accident that started the whole journey. I will admit right now (as I'm sure you can tell) I have absolutely no idea how to shade rocks. ... ... So you're left with that fancy mess. At least it doesn't look half bad in my own opinion! Then again, all I did was speckle while keeping in mind to highlight and shade lumps. If anyone has some suggestions on improving stone... I would be VERY grateful for such information. Though I'd like to imagine my clouds are pretty spot on ^u^ They were last minute filler, but i really liked the way they came out


~
All that aside, this is my first post and I haven't seen anywhere to intro (admittedly I haven't looked very hard yet), so hi! I'm Willabee. I'm 21, a guy, I live with my bf and his mother; I've been making art-ish things for as long as I can remember, and I'd like to make them my career in one way or another. I've never had decent lessons in making any kind of art, so though I've done it for years, i feel like my skills are still very suck. I've only JUST discovered the power of researching art techniques on the internet, and I'm very excited to see what i can learn.

Also for the record, if this post seems jumbled or if the grammar is too off for your liking; it's midnight thirty right now and had soda about 3 hours ago... a decision I regret... though it tasted so good.