Even a high key painting done primarily with light and middle values needs a dash of dark .
The lightest lights and the darkest darks are like spices in soup: without them , you have a very bland soup...too much and you ruin the soup...

Below is a miniature painting I did of one of my students at the preschool I taught at . It is on a 2 1/2 x 2 inch tile .

I entered the piece in the Florida Miniature Society show where it was juried into the show.. but was never returned to me.. so all I have are the photos and they are not the greatest photos..

Bear with me a second: I have to tell you a little story about Corey before I go on. I taught Corey when he was 4 ...and he was a great little kid... smart and full of curiosity..and you know what THAT usually means( grin)

He and his best buddy Logan ( who I also painted) were not always IN trouble.. but were usually in the close vicinity .

One morning, I got to work to discover that , after I had gone home for the day and transfered the kids who had not yet been picked up by their parents to the 5 year old room , somehow the 30 gallon fish tank in the room "accidentally " broke when a couple of kids decided to attract the fishies' attention by tapping on the glass with wooden blocks..

As it turned out, Corey was sitting at a table happily coloring when the "excitement"occurred...

But we all had a great laugh when his mother brought him in the next morning with a tee shirt on that said :" I was nowhere near it when it happened!" ...

OK ... back to the piece:

The first picture shows the next to last fire... I almost left it alone at this point because I was trying to get very subtle skin tones and they kept firing out... I FINALLY got the skin tones to the point that I was reasonably happy with them... but it was not quite right..

The dilemma: Do I add those little hits of darkness .... the " zingers" as Jane Marcks calls them, that make the difference and risk firing this piece again.. or do I leave it as is?

I decided to take a shot... I added some tiny dashes of dark ( lips, shirt , hair, glasses ) .. deepened a few other areas...and especially went for it on the background..

You can see the huge difference thjose small bits of dark made...especially in the background. Note how the darker hits of color in strategic places really makes Corey pop!

Of course, if it had all fired out again, I would be kicking myself ... but...no guts.no glory

So the next time your painting is looking alittle bland, spice it up with some darkest darks....