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[EvilEye]

I am noticing the light source seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In several places it seems there should be shadows but there are none.

Looking back at your other pictures there is the same problem in a few places.

The dark patch on the birds cheek also perplexes me. Maybe post the reference?

[Panda]

Sure, here are the references I used:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martistic/3128789620/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vidular/2994562868/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/khosla/83096799/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neomax/3196989758/

Also made up some stuff as I went just because I liked how it looked though
As for light sources, yeah I could pay more attention, but the lighter bits on the feathers, I think are the actual feathers having lighter colours on the ends.

[TrevoriuS]

As for light sources, yeah I could pay more attention, but the lighter bits on the feathers, I think are the actual feathers having lighter colours on the ends.

Although the gradient in feather colour is certainly true, there is a bit of both going on here. I like your clean and controlled style but would love to see more detail in terms of light and texture going on some day. I think you are able to do that about as well, but would just suck up alot of time

[EvilEye]

While still good, this piece looks flat because of the lack of shading.

I don't know how much this helps, but I painted over your piece to show where you could go with this.

[bengo]

Great edit Evileye but I think it takes a bit of the feel of the piece away by giving it more depth, either way its awesome though.

[Ryumaru]

I disagree that it looks half done, the piece imo stands as is.
But I do agree that you don't work much with light and shade.

[Panda]

@ EvilEye: Thanks for the paint over, really appreciated. I'll either rework this or make something new, but thanks for opening my eyes.

Since ptoing already challenged me to pixel something with strong lightsources, I'll eventually make that and it should be different to what I usually do.
I get to pixel plenty of varied stuff when I work, but yeah... I just end up doing what I enjoy the most when I pixel for fun.
But doing different things should definitely be interesting.