Hi all! It's been a little while. I've been doing smaller pieces since my last post, generally for Pixel Joint weeklies, and I didn't feel I had much to offer crit-wise with a lot of recent posts. That said, I'm pleased to see that Pixelation seems to be a bit livelier than it was last year and I'll try to contribute more.

I'm currently working on a piece that I started back in 2008. It was going to be the first thing I posted here when I originally intended to get into pixel art, but I wasn't able to finish it and, for various reasons, I didn't do any art for a decade until I joined here last year. I started it in my teens as an homage to J W Waterhouse's Ophelia, which is one of my favourite paintings. At the time I didn't just want to do a study, so it's my version of it (although the subject is the same, so it's intended to tell the last moments of her story from Hamlet).

My intention is to finish this for Thursday 6th (fortunately I'm off work quite a bit before then) to mark a year of being a Pixelation and Pixel Joint member. All of this is WIP but I mostly feel okay about plugging away at it except for the foliage. I can't find a method that looks quite right. Here's the version that I think is looking best:

Ultimately, the more distant foliage that I've done in blue will use the same style as the nearer parts, but I haven't had time to fill that in and I'm already doubting that this is the right look.

An earlier version with a different, and I think even worse, approach is here.

Over the past year, I feel I've learned that I want a simple approach (i.e. easily recognisable forms, nothing too detailed to distract from the subject, and nothing noisy) and also something that shows some intention behind it, but landscapes are very much not my thing.

Here are a couple of references that have a similar look to the one I'm going for: one / two.

Like I say, there's a fairly tight deadline for this which is why I'm looking for such specific advice. I am always interested in broader crits, but I may not be able to implement everything this time round (and I've already had a round of feedback on an earlier version over at the PJ Discord). There are some things which I'm married to at this stage: the overall composition isn't changing (I will add in some leaves for the trees once the ground cover is sorted), and adding colours might be a bit awkward this far in.

If anyone's interested, this is how it looked in 2008.