Alrighty, the originals a bit farther back but I guess that shouldn't matter too much. Don't mind the huge canvas as I intend to draw out the whole character and add a background.

So I changed the beard color as you suggested and made it shape around his chin a bit better. I'm not sure what else I can do as far as detail as the beard is small and just kind of wraps around his chin on the actual character but I'm open to your suggestions. Thank you for your feed back!

Hi All, Immortal Wombat here. I'm relatively new here as we'll as being new to pixel art. I used to doodle characters a lot as a kid/early teen but other than that I don't really have any other background in art. Despite my short time here I've already received much help in the way of constructive criticism and positive feedback. Its always nice to find such a friendly community as this. I hope I can one day help others along with their projects on here as others have helped me.

Thanks for the input guys it means alot. It might be a bit before I get back to this one as i just made a portrait of a buddies ff14 character for a discord icon and ended up being asked to do a bunch more lol.  I can expand the canvas some more and play with the shadows although I guess I'm just a fan of soft shadowing. maybe just on the spots that need a more defined outline or possibly more gradation on the caracter? I'll definitely play around with harsher shadows a bit. As for the shield is it the size or maybe it needs to be farther over to the left? Or maybe add some curvature?

I agree, especially the water. I like the sky in the first one quite a bit. I might even go for a dusk setting or maybe just change the robe colors.  I also like the gradient use in your renditions and will likely play around with that. I'll mess around with it and post the results. Thanks for the pointers!