Pink flower

To practice less structured colour shading I have done a five petaled flower using the same stitch pattern throughout. Here are the threads and pattern:

Obviously the outline is very stylised but I wanted a clear shape that could be made interesting through the use of shading. I used a slightly simplified form of the third blue shading experiment using only two thicknesses of thread. The darkest colour is 2 strands and the lightest is 1 strand. The mid tone appears in both thicknesses to graduate between them. Here is the finished result:

The problem with using a light colour is that when the thread is very thin the colour is even more muted and appears almost the same as the background fabric. The lightest edges can be differentiated more by a change in texture from the background than by a change in colour. I do like the shading within the petals though where the lines of darker colour come out from the centre. Looking at it from a distance the edges stand out more clearly and it appears generally more interesting than it does close up.

I like how delicate the very pale edges make it appear but I think using a slightly darker tone would have worked better. It is just going to be difficult to work out how dark the lightest colour should be.