There are a heap of good threads in the forum of course, and the featured threads are nice - one place that I found some pretty good discussion of this was over at the interviews on PJ which include two regulars from hereabouts, Adarias and iLkke:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/2008/01/05/2408/Pixel_Artist_-_Adarias.htm
http://www.pixeljoint.com/2009/02/20/2758/Pixel_Artist_-_iLKke.htm
http://www.pixeljoint.com/2009/10/03/2938/Pixel_Artist_-_Syosa.htm

all three talk about their philosophy of palette picking and unification, and if you squint hard enough, they are all talking about very similar prnciples.

also, of course:

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=922.0

Also I recently picked up "Interaction of Colors" by Joseph Albers, and it is blowing my mind. I will post more substantively about that when I can.

I feel like I need a kick in the ass, I drop pieces whenever I can properly visualize them in my head or my silly palette experiments seems to mesh. At this point it seems pretty masturbatory and I want to kick that bad habit. Anyone have any tips on helping me rekindle my love for the more automatic, laborious side of pixel art?

The wife ran into a similar problem in school. One thing that helped was to focus on doing series work, the other thing was just treating it like work. Like cleaning house, once you commit and start it is oddly satisfying.

My biggest criticism so far is that there does not seem to be any real rhyme or reason to the shapes of clusters of pixels. I mean, there is, but the outlines are awfully jaggy and irregular, and could be cleaned up relatively easily. Also, the shading is somewhat pillowy and as a result the wings and the body appear to be on different planes.

I will take a crack at a proper edit to show what I mean when I am not at work.

Incidentally: where is this taking place and what is the scene surrounding the pose? The pose does not convey a particular story or action to me, despite it being a relatively unlikely pose (as opposed to simply standing or reclining, say.)

All that said, I think this piece has a lot of promise and you seem to be doing a good job of developing it.

EDIT:

Is there a reference for this image? I ask because if there is it will be helpful to compare and also might help explain the unusual drawing-a-bow/warding an attack pose. Incidentally I notice that that pose is not unusual for angelic characters, oddly:



EDIT (again):I am a doofus

Yeah, but just really for the wings.
I took some pictures from google (like a dress or something) but the only picture i still have, is this:
http://www.hd-gbpics.de/gbbilder/engel/engel5.jpg

Part or the problem is that to my thinking, resting an appropriately sharpened double-edged sword of that size on your bare shoulders would be problematic cut your arms off at the shoulders.

Just speaking about the pose, it seems that either the arm going over the handle would project forward on the z-axis, or it would grasp the handle and hang down. (Try it with a broom or something - that is what I did.)

Yes, on the other hand Lovecraft is notoriously bad for violating one of the few commandments of writing; "Show, don't tell." In my opinion this is what kept him from being a truly great writer. See: Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. When he gets it right, though, it is pretty great.