First 5 Grisaille Studies

I've got a challenge for the first quarter of this year - paint 100 grisaille studies.  It's for the love of exploring paint.  And yeah ok, lots of focus on values, and brush strokes, and use of medium, and composition, and, and, and. . .

This first one is my benchmark for where I started at.  And I'm going to make another one every 25 studies or so.

Then I simplified the compositions so I can focus on each item better and finish each study in an hour or hour and a half.  Here's number 2.

And number 3

Number 4

And number 5.  

I'm starting to get it.  I've got my palette set up with 4 values, plus white and black.  Then after blocking in with those 4 values, I start mixing and adding the values in between.  My eye is starting to learn how to condense the values and how to build a form to be 3D rather than just paint and hope it turns out looking like a 3D form.  

Now only 95 more to go!