I’m taking an online class (more precisely, watching streaming demos online) by Peggi Kroll-Roberts who is particularly known for her beach photos of human figures. The class is about value structures to show the form of the human figure: the lights and darks.

Effectively, this is a notan. You start with 2 values and then move to 2 darks, 1 light or 2 lights, 1 dark. And then you move to color.

My next step here would be to paint in black and white, then to move to 3 values, and finally to color — using colors mapped to the values.

In fact, Laurel Hart, in her 2007 book Putting People in your Paintings (on p. 23) even suggests you even go ahead and paint over your penciled-in shadows if you prefer. You can erase the pencil later.