This is actually one of the first big pixel artworks I made a couple of years ago, to teach myself some basics.

Problems with pixel art I often notice are people (including me) either overcomplicate it or try to make it look as close to real-life/reference as possible, which isn't the reason pixel art exists in the first place.

Here is the reference photo btw. This is what a friend buys for her family of four:

Complex looking, isn't it?

Simplification is king.

Here lies the problem. You see a work above and it looks complex (I have to agree here, Broccoli, apples, and carrots are a bit too much tbh).

But if you look at the mushrooms, tomatoes, and yams, you might notice they are simple, made only with 2-4 colors each (not counting the outlines).

It is hard to let go of the details for me, but when I do some magical things start to happen :)

For all of the times, one thing I learned is to start with a composition thumbnail instead of diving right into the work.

As you can see above, I was planning to include everything...

Everything!

Starting with a silhouette of an object or a character can help with coherence later on. The details won't matter as much later on if an item is easy to recognize from its shape.

Apples were one of the first things I've made. Tbh I like them the least because of the details :D Too many orphaned pixels to show their texture. Yams on the other hand turned out cool.

The rice bag was difficult because I wanted to render the plastic properly and that requires more complex shading.

At this point, I realized I had too many items to work on, and rearranged the composition.

Phew glad I've decided to cut down on half of them or this work would never get finished!

After choosing which objects to leave and which to toss, I ended up moving the Soy milk pack to the sweet potatoes.
At this stage I've also changed the background color for a darker value.

It was all straight forward after that, with carrots, shadows and floor pattern being the last things added.

There were tons of layers in this one :D

I still have a long way to go to get better at organizing layers and workflows. It's especially important since I want to do more animation and eventually work on an indie game, either my own or team up with someone else :)