[Bren]

Here is a pic almost complete. Not %100 happy with it, could anyone give me advice.
Question: When painting shadows and highlights I generally start with a base color and start mixing in darker/lighter colors to get my shadow areas and lighter areas. As the picture progresses I start picking my colors from the picture itself .. I dont use a paint palette. Problem: my colors begin to get dirty. Should I create a palette before I start, to keep my colors clean .. Any tips??
Sorry I could workout how to get the picture to show in this post.
http://www.brenly.com/painting05.htm

[Halliday]

The painting is nice. There's a nice sense of depth, and the lighting gives it a nice atmosphere. The posing is good, though the right should seems like it'd be way to low to me.

On the matter of your question, I start off the same way, blocking out shadows and hightlights, and then go from there. I think the reason your colors seem dirty to you is that you're just darkening your base colors by adding black, and making your highlights by adding white. Try adding other colors to create warmer highlights and cooler shadows (like light yellow or dark blue). I don't know if you've taken any painting classes, and I'm not nearly experienced enough to really articulate what I'm trying to get at, but I was taught that you're never really looking at the color you think you are. There might be more blue in your greens than you think. Something can be made to read green without even really using the color green in it. I don't know if that's any help to you, but that's what I was taught. Good stuff though guy. Keep it up.
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[Bren]

Thanks for the input. Yeh, Ive never had any formal training so my knowledge about mixing colors is fairly limited. Your right about adding black and white. Next painting Im going to play around with adding color to try and create shadows and highlights. For me itll be hard work because Im so use to working my colors from the canvas and mixing in white and black. Hoefully my next pic works out better. THanks for the input much appreciated!