[C+C]Looking for advice

[Altourus]

Hey guys,

Over the past 4 months I've been participating on a subreddit called RedditGetsDrawn where users submit photos to be drawn by community members. I've been using as a place for source materials and ideas so I could practice my Pixel art. However I feel like I haven't been progressing much lately and would like some input on what areas I should focus on getting better at.

For reference here's the album of images with their original threads.
http://imgur.com/gallery/ovo3K

[Decroded]

your subject matter is all pretty similar and mostly uses the exact same canvas.

have u considered biting off more?
try differente canvas shapes and sizes, explore different compisitions for scenes, draw various landscapes in different weather conditions, rocks, animals from reference, buildings, cars etc.
then perhaps use what u learned to create some fantasy or sci-fi scenes etc.

[Altourus]

Fair point, think i'll start working from images in http://morguefile.com/

[Manupix]

Draw from life, otherwise you'll always depend on somebody else doing the hardest part of the work (composition, perspective, light). Even more than that, you need to unlearn how you think things look like, and just look at them as if you had never seen them before and had no idea what they are. Only this will teach you how they do look like.

Using refs is great but should be restricted to getting info about how to draw things that are not readily available, not whole images to copy.