Oh thanks, actually the design had a more subdued color, and we both agreed that these colors would work as "gold". We looked at various references and agreed that these shades were appropriate based on the various references for the mask. On the other hand, the DF is my watermark on every illustration I make. I really appreciate your feedback, and I will apply those recommendations to the design of indoril Nerevar that I hope to do soon.

There's a "DF" hidden in the bottom-right of the background.

There's 13 colours in the palette but if you start compressing that number down, you don't see any notable difference in the picture even when you get to 9 colours. At around 8 it almost seems like the contrast in value is an improvement. That's because the reduction of colour means a stronger distribution of value.

At the moment there isn't an even spread of value across your palette, and a lot of colours end up in a relative clump. What could be anti-aliasing around the bottom of the mask, or the circular structure around the face, comes off as pillow-shading since it seems to reach toward the middle of each segment, with a highlight in the very middle of those segments. Because of how strongly saturated your yellows and reds are, they don't give the impression of a gold mask, but something made of cheese. You want something more subdued, with much less red - shifting hues makes sense normally, but in this case you want the impression of muted gold.

Getting the impression of gold or metal or rock or any surface across in pixelart is difficult because we're trained as artists to look for gradients of colour and nicks and scratches of detail [https://twitter.com/tips4artists/status/1097647168385703936]. But with a limited resolution and palette, and perhaps a more limited understanding of art, we have to rely on the basic conveyance of edges, planes where the light doesn't reach, and highlights on the edges closest to where we face. Rather than thinking of the mask as an outline or series of lines to fill in with colour, it may be easier to try and think of how a block would react to light being cast on it (which sides of the block would be darker, which edges of the block would be brighter) and apply that logic to something more complicated like rock formations, and then bring that knowledge back with you to attempt the mask one more time.

http://www.androidarts.com/art_tut.htm#light_stuff

https://twitter.com/WoostarsPixels/status/1152679122050703360

https://twitter.com/neobrsk/status/599750416755101696