Great feedback Larry! Thanks for the attention and redo. It was very kind of you. Indeed the shadow is too dark on most monitors. On my monitor, which seems to be very bright, the shadow is not that dark and you can see the desert, feet, and staff clearly. But, on my monitor at work it is too dark.

Your touch up on the shadow looks great - I hope you leave that up so that I can study it at a later time. I can make the shadow lighter with ease because I did this piece in layers. I have that shadow in its own layer and can lighten merely by changing the opacity percentage. But there are aspects about how you did it that looks better... maybe the color of the sand that you put in.

Thanks everybody.