Scott and Allen,
Thank you both for taking the time to reply. I do understand that this painting is rather flat, but that's because I'm planning on deeping or enhancing my middle tones with rich colors for shadows. My first attempt (that I mentioned above) before Christmas was not so flat, but I achieved that by using darker darks for the shadows. My problem was then that when I glazed, it got TOO dark. I am trying to build up that darkness with glazes, as I understood this was the method from reading previous posts about underpainting on this forum.
You can see my previous attempt on an earlier post:
http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...+underpainting
So, I have arrived at the solution to paint my underpainting using light and middle tones becuase the darker tones get too dark. You can understand my confusion, am I missing something?
Joan