Before I began the second version of the colour study, I changed 3 Light modeling values: Light Light values to 9.5, Middle Light to value 9, and the Dark Light value at 8.5.  The Half Tone which transitions to the shade side is a value 8.
 
As I mix the colours, I add in just enough of the same value of neutralized grey which lowers the chroma creating colours that are more natural.
 
I used 4 colours for the Light part of the Ptarmigan and snow:  Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red Medium and Quinacridone Magenta.  I create the 4 values with each of the 4 colours.
 
For the Dark modeling values I chose: Light Dark is Value 7, Middle Dark is Value 6, Dark Dark is Value 5.  I did add in a Value 8 as well to give myself some mixing flexibility. 
 
I chose 2 different blues for the Dark parts: Cerulean Blue and Phthalo Blue (Green).  I used mostly the Cerulean Blue. ​

​A white object is going to have a small range of values that tend towards the lightest part of the value range.  It would be totally weird to use a value 2 in this painting.  This value range is called High Key.  So, in staying up in the higher range of values from 9.5 to value five that should give us enough value range to create the forms. 

When a camera takes a photo, it automatically makes the shadows darker.  Then add in printing and the shadows get even darker.   We must remember that and need to compensate for that bias.  I work to reconcile this understanding by lightning up the shadows.  Always remembering that what my eyes see and what the camera see are two different things.
 
As we are modeling a white object there is a very delicate shift of value as the planes begin to turn away from the light, that is until that terminus line.  Then it is a solid cut-off line. 

When I work on a colour study, I don't really worry about it being perfect.  My goal is to get value/colour information, which will inform all the decisions that I will make prior to launching into the actual painting.
 
This is not a very big painting is 28 by 20 centimeters (8x10 inches).
 
In this study I started at the birds first.  I think when I go to do the final painting that I will do the background first before moving to the birds.  One thing that is be interesting will be that there are going to be a lot of lost edges. That is what happens when one paints a white bird on white snow.

You will notice that my shutter speed is going to stay the same all the way along at 2500.  I don't want that number to change through the whole process. The reason I used 2500 is that I am doing bird photography. Keeping the shutter speed very quick compensates for when they decide to move.  Birds tends to move fast and I want the image to be as clear as possible.
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What I'll be focussing on when we do this exercise is using  the ISO setting to modify the amount of light coming into the camera sensors.  ISO is the film speed.  In the old days we would get film that had an ISO of 25, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600.  But now our digital cameras can have an ISO of 25,000 or higher, which can be amazing for really low light settings but also tends to be "noisy".  First I start with taking an automatic reading to get the cameras light exposure reading.  The moving indicator will land in the centre of the exposure value range which is at that 0. (scale below)