Less is More

I am going to try something new with this painting. It's a beginning, a cadmium red toned canvas with the lights painted in pale pink. I posted it on Instagram and one friend, a painter, said; "It's finished!" That gave me an idea. How can I add more paint, lots of layers of paint, but retain the image that I started with- which is a Notan? Notan is a Japanese word that means "light-dark balance,"and can be achieved by value masses of light and dark within a composition. Instead of five or even three values, we reduce the values to two. Light and dark. What could be more simple?