Darktiste Sketchbook

[JosephCow]

You don't quite have the right idea about 3 value notan. Right now you're purposefully trying to separate every element somehow using just 3 values. You're using 3 values, yes, but that's not 3 value composition. You should actually give yourself +1 point every time a big object has only one value. 

 Let me explain. 
 This is the simplest one, but it's the one you want to make the most hard. Squint. The sky is one value, the ground is another. There are a few dark values scattered in the bushes be we wont worry about that now. Those are details. They are important to the composition, but it's just not what we're doing right now. 




This one's more complex, but it's still very simple. The artist uses a lot of variations in the second value to separate objects in the scene, but it doesn't change the fact that all these shapes are the same value.




This last one is quite complicated. I think the sky must be 2 different values because the clouds separate from the roof, but the sky separates from the lit part of the house. However there is nothing in the sky that is anywhere near a dark value.  You're comparing different parts of the image to black with the little swatches I think. But you need to be comparing big shapes of value to each other. It makes no difference whether something is close to black or not, because it's all about relativity. It only matters if it's a dark in this context.





Again there are little pieces of different values scattered around, but those are details, not structural parts of the picture.


My challenge to you is to redo the one I didn't comment on and see if you can make the composition ring true.