I used reference for the shape of the boat and for general proportions, then filled the shapes in with basic colours and applied texture to the wooden deck. I used transparent brushes to draw the controls in the glass, and used black gradients for anti-aliasing the glass into the plastic parts. Then I shaded the plastic parts and applied anti-aliasing to the red railing parts.
The entire piece is a combination of pixelart and a few brushes with transparency, and it's not purely pixelart like my DE_VANTAGE map. Time preferred a black outline to anti-aliasing with transparency (like the car in the top left of the render, which was hand-made by me too) so I left the outline like that.
If you click on the picture in OP you'll open the deviantART page with the exact reference I used.
Ehh, I think it's too realistic for a game like this. Otherwise it's not that bad. One thing, I'm wondering, have you really painted it or did you resize the real-life photo and edit it?
The render was made on one of my old RP map projects. I added the trees, bushes, ice shadows, gangplank, poles, cliffs and vehicles for aesthetic purposes and the quality of the render is not representative of the quality of the map.