[Garth Herrick]

Pat,

It's gorgeous! I love the simple execution and tonality. I don't think you need to go darker necessarily at this stage. Heed Karin Wells' advice. Keep in mind that all photo and book illustration references are invariably too contrasty. It is always so revealing to see the original masterpiece in all it's glory and subtlety, next to it's postcard downgrade! If you copy the darks and lights exactly to the extremes as in your reference, your painting risks becoming to the viewer, a bad copy of a photo, in effect. You can always cautiously and judiciously add the darks, and heighten the lights, later. Done just right and they will sparkle over the underpainting. If you make things too dark, it is difficult to regain the original lighter underpainted effect. If you make the lights too light, they will be too flat, un-dynamic, pasty, and lack any room for real color development and expression. However, you will want to build up the lighter areas (in their correct tonality) as opacities that blanket over the underpainting. But ideally, the underpainting will continue to glow through in the darker areas and edges. If you make things too dark over the glow of the underpainting,and try to correct with lighter paint, you will lose that old master warm glow, and have a more deadening cool pasty effect. Knowing this, however, you can always correct for too much warm underpainting glow, at the end, with a few final adjustments of a more dead opacity to tune and match up with the underpainting. I'm throwing too much at you for now. Right now you are doing just fine and can be justly proud of your accomplishment. Kudos!

Garth