The biggest issue I see is there are a bunch of colors that are very similar. Here is the palette sorted by brightness.



All those browns could be simplified to a few colors. This goes the same with the greens, blue, and orange. Too many colors with not enough range makes the image feel muddy and lacking in contrast. Lowering your color count will go a long way in making it easier to tweak your palette and get better results.

It took me some time to figure out where the feature you were talking about is, ptoing. Once I tracked it down much fun was had doing completely ridiculous edits. Amazing feature set there, thanks for pointing it out!

I've tried a lot of edits to try and make a boat work and I have arrived here. It looks like a toy, which is okay with me. The boat's wake is shit. If I do another edit past this I'll clean it up.

I tried to make the old clouds work with the noisy gradient stuff and could not find anything that worked. I like these stringy simple clouds. They are not as dramatic as what I started with, but they work.

The birds. I don't know. The bird looking directly at us is totally contrived, but I am going to keep it. Without it, the birds facing the other way look like purple blobs because that is what they are.

Sorry for the minimal explanation with the latest image. Brain is sludge tired. It is far from done. The sky is a flat color because I removed everything in the image and focused on the water first. I have not abandoned the dithering idea yet. I agree the water has a noisy, grainy feel to it that I plan to work out more. Overall I am much happier with it than the stylized waves. I messed with the wave swirls for hours and hours and never could get them to feel right. Maybe it is the colors. Maybe I am a terrible artists. Probably both.

I have considered dropping the resolution. I am not ready to give up quite yet. I'd like to explore the grainy thing a bit more before I do.

To maybe clarify some misconceptions, if anyone feels like doing color value, res, or any other edits, please very much do so. Just because I am slamming my head against the wall trying to make these colors work does not mean I'll turn a blind eye to other edits outside of my little rules. Explanations of why adding a tiny hint of blue to a color and how it will rock my world would be amazingly helpful. My goal here is to learn more about colors and using them effectively, not creating an awesome sunset scene. Who seriously draws sunset scenes?

pistachio
I find it interesting that you find the sun too bright when in the images you've linked for reference the sun is close to white in both of them. Unless you meant the sky? Which again is basically untouched at this point.

skamocore
I got the colors out of a color index book for designers. I personally like the colors in combination, but I can completely understand why people would feel they are ugly. I also agree that I have used them in ugly ways in this very thread.

I did some quick box dithering to get a feel for bringing down the harshness of some of the colors and contact points. I think this helps in some ways and hurts in others. It comes across more as dawn than dusk to me now so I may bring in more of the orange to bring back some of the vividness of the sky.

I hope I do not come across as hard headed or dismissive. I appreciate all the comments and advice.

st0ven
I think you're dead on about the purple and blue being very harsh when next to each other in large chunks. If I am going to make this funky palette work I will be more mindful of that. Your comment of pushing the square nature of the pixel intrigues me, and I'd appreciate if you could go on a bit more about that as I am not sure I fully understand.

Mathias
It is interesting that I find this much blue in your edit to be too harsh for me, but in my original I find the orange sky and purple water not nearly as disturbing. I followed your lead of dropping the waves outside of the sunlight in my edit. Not because I want to remove them entirely. I think they distract from the numerous other issues I'd like to focus on first.

StaticSails
I find the reaction to these colors interesting. Don't get me wrong, I can see what everyone is saying and where their complaints are coming from, I suppose I have not given up yet on my original intentions of trying to make them work. I take into account that there is a lot of experience here working with limited colors and people have a good feel for when combinations do not work. I feel compelled for my own understanding to keep at it and if in the end concede that I cannot make them work together I hope that it is because I explored all my options and learned a thing or two.

Many edits all over the place. I tried to address a number of things including clutter, lack of wave layering, overall sloppiness with the depth, simplifying, on and on. There are a few more spots I'd like to carve into however it is late here and I am exhausted. I think it is moving in the right direction.