Here is a small piece I did, after looking at examples, I understand that it might not qualify as pixel art. I used a small Intuos to draw this in Grafx2 using the default palette. I just selected some dominant colors as base colors. A goofy western style character profile.

Here is the picture



My question is this. Here is a current picture I am looking at right now on pixeljoint.com. This is obviously done by an experienced pixel artist. With me just starting out, I don't have the terminology down, so I can just show you what I mean. If you look at the red vehicle, you will notice that the rounding is done with shading.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/95960.htm

I thought it would be as simple as copying some lines, but as most of you know, without the right steps it can start to fall apart. If you see the green hat on my picture, there is a similar rounding around the edges.  I would like to shade this correctly and highlight it also. So I'm looking for some pointers on how I can do this. My experience is with very simple sketches, but the pixel art with the vehicle is an example of what direction I would like to go. As for the size, after looking at some threads, I know that it's way too big for pixel art, but I would like to apply pixel art style coloring to it at that size.

Any suggestions?