I have just “finished” a painting of most of a cat peeking out from behind a shrub with white flowers with a green background, however when viewed from a distance the white flowers totally dominate. I intend to tone a lot of them down with a glaze but wondering what colour to use. Blue would recede them but they are supposed to be in front, yellow would make the painting too green.
Anyone got a favourite colour for toning down white?
Well I did some experimenting and washed some of the white flowers with Windsor Violet which seemed to calm it down, but really I simply needed to get rid of some.
Only need to paint in the whiskers now…arrrghhhh…
Maybe you could share some demo pics of your process?
Placement is kind of too late at your point in this painting… So you did get rid of some and you’re happy with it now? So size was the problem after brightness of the white then?
Sometimes you can shift focus by not only color but contrast on your intended focal point. “Fuzz” out the rest slightly and bring one thing into focus. David Cheifetz really exaggerates this in his work. Check him out. Not that you would do what he does, but he demonstrated my point nicely. 
Focus on this painting. Color on this one. You know, just for an example or two.
Thanks Savocado, that’s useful information. I think there was too much going on between the stripey cat and lots of flowers next to it, I also painted out a few flowers by turning them into leaves. That helped.
Being visual, I usually have to see the solution before I know what it is. Sometimes after I see it I feel like a dope, because I’ve been here before. 
To get the solution before I solve the problem (if I am really stuck), I will photograph the piece and bring into photoshop and ‘have at it’ warming or cooling colors, deleting, resizing until I see what it is that is bugging me. I wish I had a quicker process! But that’s just impatience speaking. I expect a lot from myself!
I see improvement over the long run and I do get quicker ascertaining the problem and having less issues altogether, so I’m learning! Sounds like you are ‘self-teaching’ too.