Overview

It's time to practice your value organization skills! Your goal with a value study is to accurately and succinctly represent the visual essence of the subject. In this project, you'll organize the tonal values of an image into 4 value groups. 

Materials Needed

• The project image. (See download section.)
• You can do the value study in any medium, drawing or painting, digital or traditional. Choose the medium you are most comfortable with.
• If you work in traditional media, you might want to print the project image for reference.

Steps

1. Download the project image.
2. Begin your value study by keying the image.
   Identify and place the lightest and darkest value groups. (Do not choose black or white. Instead, pick average values for the lightest and darkest regions of the image.)
3. Add the third and fourth value groups. Balance all groups in such a way that you match the effect of your value study to the effect of the original as much as possible.
4. You can include gradients, but do so carefully.
5. Upload your study alongside the original image.

Duration

This project should take 20–40 minutes to complete.

Guiding Questions

• Did I stay organized and limited to 4 value groups?
• Do the relationships between these value groups represent the visual essence well?
• Did I complete the value study in 20–40 minutes? (If it takes longer, you probably got sucked into over-focusing on proportions or edges, or your technique for filling in areas of tone is inefficient.)
• Did I use a few strategically placed soft edges to dramatically improve the similarity between my value study and the subject?
• Are the proportions close enough to recognize the subject reasonably well?