Well after scraping off several attempts at painting pears with fewer and more deliberate brush strokes, I think I finally had some progress and success. In this group I decided to begin with a black and white to help me determine the values that I was struggling with. This seemed to help out quite a bit in the long run. The first 4 of these only took me about 10-15 minutes each. That is my goal with these quick studies. The last one I played with a bit longer. I want to do this same sort of study with another subject. It has been very helpful.