I strongly recommend watching the timelapse video for this. What I started with looks nothing like this final image.

Timelapse Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYyfFGFdyzY

It was fun trying to figure out how I want this image to look. Most of the changes was mostly due to not feeling like look right. I wanted a sinister looking dog and the round face I had at the start just didn't seem to match. Also, I miss working with bright colors too.

I think the ultimate lesson I learned here is to start with grayscale before adding colors. I find that it really helps me to start with a base of colors that work well with each other. Once I did that the colors were a no brainer.