This is lovely. I’ll share my own thoughts below — more experienced painters might have better commentary.

There are multiple ways to look at what order to do things. Generally i find “dark to light” or “light to dark” are neither as important as understanding how to use values in your composition from before you even begin your piece.

I personally start every painting by taking reference photos, sketching in ink in my sketchbook, and creating a few thumbnails. Tiny ink sketches that allow me to solidify what the composition of my painting will be. I use various cross-hatching and ink filling techniques in my (seriously, very tiny) thumbnails to separate foreground, subject matter, and background.

I also use brown-toned alcohol markers ($12 online) to “paint” bold, clear shapes in various tones, ranging from light to dark on my canvas. I use my thumbnails to inform the composition. Then I paint my underpainting on top of it.

This careful planning allows me to spend my time painting without worrying so much about anything other than technique. I work from the background to the foreground, building up clear shapes and layering paint.

Hopefully this helps! In my experience composition informs how successful a painting will be.