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But now you're saying I should start with thick layers of paint? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something? I would really appreciate it if someone could help me to understand this better!
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It is confusing, part of the hazard of internet site-length bits and pieces. No, I wasn't (and I don't think others were, but they'll pipe up if I'm misrepresenting them) suggesting "thick" painting in the sense of impasto. What I've always struggled against myself and what I think we're talking about here is lifting one brushload of paint from the palette and expecting it to cover 100 square inches of canvas. That's what's being referred to as reducing your paint application to "scratching" the pigment on. The problem with that sort of application is that you've gone to all the trouble of looking, seeing, assessing, mixing, and applying -- but after you start scrubbing the paint on way too "parsimoniously", all that information is lost.
One of the masters of the classical realism school, Stephen Gjertson, goes through TONS of paint on a piece, but because he keeps those applications thin (and he uses sable brushes), you'd think the paint layer was mica-thin. It isn't; it's archivally thick.
I have to mentally go through the exercise of picking up a brushload of paint, applying it and moving it around, and as soon as I can see the canvas or underpainting through my application (assuming that's not an effect I want -- sometimes it IS), I go back and pick up another brushload. Also, if you're going to try to blend two colours or value areas together after application, you simply have to have a good supply (not a toothpaste stripe by any means, but good coverage) in order to have some malleability to the paint surface to accomplish that zipping together of edges.
Steven