To improve my understanding of values, I am practicing grey scale sketches in 3 shades of grey. These make a big difference in the final painting as one knows exactly where to apply dark and light colours. I feel bad that I did not find this 3 years back! Anyway better late than never. Here are couple of examples.
Here is my painting which I made as a demo to few of my friends. It was a very special experience and very satisfying as the painting turned out to be a decent one!
As I have mentioned before I have started outdoor painting since January. Currently I am trying grey scale sketches to get a feel of the "value". This exercise will help me in both composition as well as colour selection and simplification. Here are few such grey scale sketches.