Hey! Here is my version that I decided to make of a water melon.
Original post: Its a water melon
I still cant get the highlights or colors quite right. I tried using a more limited pallet but I still feel something isn’t quite right yet. I haven’t practiced enough with reference to help me where to recognize shadows and highlights on an object.
Any feedback is appreciated!
Always have a reference, picture of the object, or picture of comparison for your art.
Learn as much art knowledge as possible because I promise you can still apply it to pixel art.
This image seems to be very flat with both shapes and colors.
Since this is pixel art you want to make sure you see that it looks like a watermelon even when small. You can do this using the preview window found here:
Whereas the Original post had way too many colours.
So you probably need to
1: Make sure your object matches the ideas presented in your reference. Seed size, 3D shapes and the watermelon crust should be larger.
2: visualize light direction.
The first thing to do would be to visualize your light, maybe an arrow from a certain direction.
3: add shadows in the opposite direction keeping in mind that light will bounce off the ground and reach the bottom side of objects.
4: make more saturated red colours, and consider how warm or cold you want the watermelon to seem.
EXTRA TIP: Work from dark to light so you have nice shadow colors. You can use the bigger brush size(+ and - on Numpad) to block out your ideas and use a larger eraser to cut at those pieces. Only adding brighter colours once you are sure it is the right shape
Last nice step, add a lighter colour on a layer set to overlay.(change the transparency to liking) This gives you new ideas for lighting, one of which I see is brighter yellow in the greens and more saturated reds on the shadow border.
Thank you so much for the detailed response. I really appreciate it! Yeah, I was kind of in a rush when making the watermelon so I really didn’t use any reference. Also, looking at it now I realize that it was indeed flat. I will keep that in mind. Sorry for responding so late, I was busy the last few days lol. 
I think it is a quite nice piece! Good work!
Here are a few modifications that might be worth taking an idea or two from! I hope you don’t mind:
Dithering it quite easy, use the W key to use the wand select tool (Click on the move tool and more options should show). You can select whole swabs of color and then use that selection to become dithered with the appropriate colors in the paint tool.
Have fun drawing!
I love the creativity you used in these versions of the watermelon!! specially the third one, love the effects that one has. Thank you so much! >:D They give me more ideas to create fun and dynamic projects in the future if that makes sense lol.
