Back to basics!

I felt the urge to do some more observation paintings rather then elaborated paintings that takes a lot of time.
Kind of going back to the basics and study stuff, there's still a lot to learn.
So here I did a value study from a pic shot by my dearest, taken this summer.

I had to squeeze my eyes a lot while looking at the reference, this helped me see the values big shapes and biggest contrast, even though in this picture the contrast is very obvious. But it also helped me block out the color a bit so I could translate the color into a value.

I think and hope this approach will help me in my plain air painting, where values are very important to nail down.

More to come soon!
Cheers.