Here's an exercise I just gave the students in the painting class I teach:
Buy a few oranges. Set them up in a pile with one source of light. (Maybe you could paint at night, Chuck, to minimize the ambient light, and point a desk lamp at them.)
Then do many monochrome studies of them.
After you master that, do color studies of them. Look for all the many subtle variations of orange you will find.
Another monochrome exercise (often suggested by a terrific artist on this forum named Sharon Knettel) is to do a monochrome copy of Vermeer's painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring." You can find it on the web all over the place. Print it out as large as you can in black and white.
Good luck and have fun!
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