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It's good form here to post your reference when using one. The appreciation of the art might differ a lot according to that. Personally I don't really understand why an artist with your experience needs to resort to tracing, and I don't think it helps your art either. The form of pixel art has unexpected riches to offer the artist, I'm afraid your technique mostly doesn't allow you to see them.
I'd also strongly challenge this view: just like Vermeer set up a model and scene in his studio.
Drawing from life is infinitely more potent than from a (single) photo ref. The complexity of perception and the artistic challenge and freedom that derive from it, even of a still life scene, does not transpire through the photograph.
Nice job on the proportions then, it's nice to know how you're working 
Nice to see a 55 year old painter working with pixels :-)
Thanks for the comment - I take that as a compliment to my skills, acquired through over 35 years of painting. I am 55 years old. It's true that I work from a reference source as artists have always done- I google up a picture I want to work from (just like Vermeer set up a model and scene in his studio), and keep it there behind the GIMP while I am poking away at the pixels, but as in my conventional paintings I rough the basic colors in with a "big" brush (6 pixels), then work it up with a small one (1 pixel). So, thanks - my proportions are really good in this piece and I am pretty proud of getting the sky reflection on the water.
The reference is pretty obvious when one googles it. Also the dimensions of this piece fit the wikipedia picture when proportionally reduced. My guess is this is not pure pixel art
Thanks for your comment, Manupix, and I appreciate you sharing your views! I don't know how much detail people really want me to go into about my work philosophy, I just wanted to show what I have done, but if you want to read this that would be great.
If you have looked at my work at kennethjdevries.com you've seen I do a lot of different types of work. For certain art projects or series of works I systematize the process to reduce the number of creative decisions. Like the weekly challenges here I create a brief set of rules. For this 2.4k pixel Landscapes project the rules are: Size limit of 40 x 60 px, saved at 200% for ease of viewing and to make pixels more obvious. Subject - realist landscape, as realistic as I can get. Source, the first things that come up on a google search - if I don't find something I like right away I look for something else. I don't download or save the reference image, just keep it visible in my browser, and "throw it away" when I am done by closing the window. If anybody wants to see the reference image for these I guarantee it will show up right away if you image search the title.
In some of my analog work I do use an opaque projector in exactly the same way, for example, that Canaletto used a camera obscura and many other well-known artists used similar techniques for transferring proportions to canvas. Vermeer is believed by some to have used a type of camera obscura as well. For some artists, drawing is their freedom, for others it is the gruntwork that must be done to get to where we begin to express ourselves. For my first 20 years as an artist I worked real hard to learn to draw the best I could and having done so I felt I could then use whatever technical means I needed to get the results I wanted without having to dick around with fiddly stuff for two days before I can even lay a brushful of paint on the surface. But what I use with these tiny pictures is only my eye and my hand. I seem to be pretty good at it and a lot of that is getting the colors right - there is no shortcut to that.
Everybody has their own way of working and no one way is right for everybody. I am always open to thoughtful comment like yours and I am glad to have an opportunity to get this written down as I rarely get to interact with other artists. To anyone who read all this, I thank you.