I've always liked the pixel art and I find it very fun, I think the results you can achieve with little experience are incredible, and also the fact that although you work on a small canvas you can incorporate details with a very good finish.
To make this drawing I used a free webapp called Piskel which is focused on pixel art, it has typical tools of a drawing application, so it's very simple to use.
It should be noted that for this series I will always use a 90x90 pixel canvas
1- I started by choosing the base color and making a sketch, particularly I like to make the sketches from geometric figures, in this case I drew two irregular circles to define the head and snout.
2- I focused on drawing part of the nose and mouth and fixing as many details as possible, then adjusted the distance between the mouth and nose.
3- I filled with color the areas of the face that were missing, delimited in a more pronounced way the zone between the snout and the rest of the face and I drew the eyes.
At this point the lion was already 50% finished, I polished some details related to the shape of the face, and deleted several pixels that were not in place
To make the mane I used another layer, which I placed on top of the original, drawing the mane took longer than I expected since I hadn't getting the results I wanted, however after several adjustments I achieved what I was looking for.
4- I began to draw the mane from the top of the head, increasing the volume whenever I needed it.
5- When I finished drawing the whole mane, I just added the details that were missing.