Thanks Brian, I'm glad you appreciate my work.
I don't really have the time to write tutorials unfortunately. Whenever I critique something and include an edit I usually give some sort of explanation to go along with it. That can kind of be considered a tutorial I guess. Nonetheless, there are a ton of tutorials out there that are really good. There really isn't anything I could teach that hasn't been covered already. As most people say, pixel art is all about experience. Having a good conventional art background also helps.
As for how I broke up the monotony; a lot of it has to do with the fact that the leaves are copy/pasted. I made a few different variations of the leaves and then pasted them as I saw fit. Since they're all generally the same and randomly placed, it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. After I got them all in place I further broke up the grid by changing the color around on some of the leaves to show depth. Where exactly one should do this is up to the artist. I had a big tiled image of the image up while I edited it, and I fiddled around with the placements until I felt like I broke up the grid well enough.
Well, it's been quite a while but here's the start of the palace. Extremely WIPish obviously.
Something about the perspective seems off on this piece. I think it might be the top of the palace wall. It looks like we should be able to see some of the top of it perhaps.
Feel free to tear it apart while it's still a baby.