Rock Sprite

[DYLue]

I am new to pixel art.  I would like some criticism about this top down perspective 32x32 rock sprite.  I am having trouble learning how to shade this rock to look like the reference image.  I am limiting myself to 4 colors.  My current strategy is to essentially put a darker pixel wherever I see a darker spot on the reference image and a lighter pixel wherever there is a lighter pixel.  To me, this strategy does not seem to be working so well because I get random lines that don't seem to represent anything.  Any techniques/help would be appreciated.


This is the reference image I am using: https://i.imgur.com/xHauOIX.png.

[pistachio]

Welcome to pixels and art.

I'll link to some pretty old tutorials:

lighting:


details:


To factor in a perspective difference, it's difficult to explain but think of it as a cube. Start chiseling off parts into a rocky shape, rotate it towards you (or just roll it 90deg), bam, you get a rock.

Or here's another tutorial showing basically the same thing.


Notice the first two start by painting blobs instead of drawing outlines. (pixel-specific, important to this workflow is clusters, but it's heavy stuff to get into for beginners. I'll keep it simple.)
I would advise you to do this, don't even look at the 1px brush until you have taken 4px and then 2px as far as you can.
General > specific. Good steps to take unless you seriously seriously know what you're doing.