Most value studies work best with 3 to 5 values. Two values, a notan, test the fundamental light-and-dark design. Three add a midtone that separates foreground, middle ground, and background. Five give enough range to plan most paintings. Beyond about five, you lose the simplification that makes the study useful. This guide covers how to choose the right count for your subject.

If you are new to the technique itself, start with how to do a value study before you paint. This post answers the narrower question painters ask once they know what a value study is: how many tones should it actually have?

The short answer: three to five

Three to five values cover almost every subject you will paint. This is craft consensus, not a hard rule, but the reasoning behind it is worth understanding rather than memorizing.

The value study exists to simplify. It takes the thousands of subtle tones in a reference and collapses them into a handful of decisive ones, so you can see whether the underlying structure of light works before you commit paint. Too few tones and you cannot describe the subject. Too many and you are no longer simplifying, you are copying. Three to five is the range where the study is simple enough to reveal the design and rich enough to plan the painting.

The right number inside that range depends on the subject and on what you are trying to find out. A stark portrait lit from one side might need only three. A landscape with a bright sky, a mid-value treeline, and a dark foreground might want five. Pick the smallest number that still lets the design read.

Two values: the notan

Two values test whether the basic design works, and nothing else. This is the notan, the Japanese concept of dark-light massing. You reduce the entire image to pure light and pure dark. No midtone, no grey, no gradation. Just the fundamental division.

A two-value study answers one question with brutal clarity: is the abstract pattern of light and dark shapes strong on its own? Strip away color, detail, and every intermediate tone, and either the shapes interlock into a compelling design or they scatter. There is nowhere for a weak composition to hide. This is why the notan is the most honest test in painting. It is also the fastest. You can do one in under a minute, which means you can test several compositions before you invest in any of them.

Start here when your first question is whether the composition works at all. If the two-value pattern is weak, no amount of tonal refinement above it will save the painting.

Three values: adding the midtone

Three values add a single midtone, and that midtone is what creates depth. With only light and dark, everything sits on one of two planes. Add a middle tone and you can separate foreground, middle ground, and background, which is the first step from a flat design toward a picture with space in it.

A three-value study is the workhorse. It is simple enough to stay fast, and it carries enough information to plan most compositions. You decide three things: which shapes are the lightest lights, which are the darkest darks, and which fall in the middle. That third decision, where the midtone goes and how much of the picture it occupies, is where most of the design happens. Get the proportion of light to mid to dark right and the painting has a tonal backbone.

For most painters, three values is the natural next step after the notan. Test the design in two, then plan the depth in three.

Five values: enough to plan a full painting

Five values give you enough tonal range to plan almost any painting without overcomplicating the study. You get the lightest light, a light, a midtone, a dark, and the darkest dark. That is enough to describe a full form turning through light and shadow, to show a highlight sitting inside a lit plane, and to keep a core shadow distinct from a cast shadow.

Five is the practical ceiling for a planning study. It maps roughly onto grouping a finer tonal scale into five broad bands, which is why so many painters and ateliers settle on it. Below five you are testing the design. At five you are planning the painting. This is the count to reach for when the composition is already settled and you want a tonal map you can paint from.

When more than five hurts

Past five values, the study starts to defeat its own purpose. Six, seven, and eight levels begin to reproduce the smooth gradients of the reference, and a study that looks like the photo is not simplifying anything. It tells you nothing the reference did not already tell you.

The value of a value study comes from the act of grouping. Forcing a dozen similar tones into one decisive band is what exposes whether the design holds. When you allow too many bands, you stop making decisions and start transcribing, and transcription is the very thing the study is meant to protect you from. The discipline of a low count is not a limitation. It is the mechanism.

There is a narrow exception. When you specifically want to study a delicate passage, a soft sky gradient, the subtle turn of a cheek, briefly pushing to six or seven can help you see those transitions. But that is a targeted look at one area, not a plan for the whole painting. For the overall study, stay at five or below.

Notan versus value study: not the same question

A notan and a value study ask different questions, and knowing which you need saves time. The notan, with two values, asks: does the design work? The value study, with three or more, asks: where does each tone go? Every notan is a value study, but the reverse is not true.

The distinction matters because the two-value test is where you catch a broken composition, and the three-to-five plan is where you work out how to paint a composition you already trust. Skipping the notan is how painters end up with a beautifully rendered picture built on a weak design. Skipping the fuller study is how they end up with a strong design they have no plan to execute. Most careful painters do both, in order: a quick notan to test, then a three or five value study to plan.

The people behind the idea

The vocabulary of value studies comes from two traditions that met in late nineteenth-century America. Notan was introduced to Western art education by the art historian Ernest Fenollosa, curator of the Japanese collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and popularized by Arthur Wesley Dow in his 1899 book Composition, which taught art through line, notan, and color rather than through copying nature. It became one of the most influential art education texts in America.

The way we number tones comes from Albert Munsell. His Munsell color system, published in full in 1905, defines value as lightness on a vertical scale “from black (value 0) at the bottom, to white (value 10) at the top.” When painters talk about a three-value or five-value study, they are grouping that continuous 0-to-10 scale into a few decisive bands. Munsell’s insight was that value can be measured independently of color, which is exactly what makes the value study work: two very different colors can share the same value and collapse to the same grey.

How to test different counts fast

The fastest way to find the right number of values is to try several and compare. By hand this means several small studies, which is slower but trains your eye. Digitally it takes seconds.

Overgrid has a value study feature that reduces any reference photo to a chosen number of tonal levels, adjustable from 2 up to 8. Set it to 2 and you get an instant notan to check the design. Move to 3 to plan depth. Move to 5 for a full tonal map. Flipping through the counts on the same image is the clearest way to see the trade-off: watch the design get clearer as you drop toward two, and watch it dissolve back into the photograph as you climb toward eight. The count that holds the design while still describing the subject is the one to paint from.

Overgrid runs entirely on your device, so the reference is processed locally and never uploaded. You can layer the value study under a grid overlay to plan tone and proportion in a single view, then export the result to keep beside your easel. The value study is part of Premium, a one-time purchase with no subscription.

Choose the smallest count that works

The number of values is a decision, not a default. Two to test the design. Three to plan depth. Five to map a full painting. More than five only when you are studying one delicate passage on purpose, never as a plan for the whole picture.

The instinct to add more tones is the instinct to make the study safer and more like the reference. Resist it. The power of a value study is in what it leaves out. Pick the smallest count that still lets the design read, and the study will do its job: show you the painting before you paint it.

Overgrid is available on iOS and Android. Test any number of values from 2 to 8 on your own reference, and every image stays on your device.