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I'm looking to greatly improve my painting quality, and one thing I've not done much is layer dark, mid, and light tones. I've been experimenting with zenithal highlighting with decent results, but just not getting what I want. While part of that is learning my airbrush and lightening my touch, I am also not sure on the various shades of a given color.

I'm not sure how much difference there should be between shades. I'd like good contrast to make it interesting, but I'm afraid of making it too stark a difference and looking cartoonish. I'd like to get that contrast while maintaining a high level of realism. I'm also going to be learning two brush blending which will also require that I am able to select the proper shades.

Does anyone have any tips for this, or sources I could look into? A few search attempts haven't yielded much.