I wanted to try two things: doing a face (haven't really tried to do a detailed, non-superstylized face in pixel art in quite a while) and working with a pre-constructed color palette. A lot of pixel artists make a palette first and go from there, which seems like a good, solid technique - I tend to pick colors as they become necessary rather than deciding on a palette beforehand, so my palettes don't have a lot of forethought behind them. I ended up using less than half of my picked colors and tweaking a lot of them, so I don't know if that method works so well for me when I'm used to picking them as I go, hahaha.

Faces are rough! But this was a good lesson in the fact that good proportions can make all the difference. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I ended up completing 90% of the piece before I realized the eyes were too close together and changed them - it looked a lot better to me. It's interesting using a lot of weird, semi-desaturated colors.