Value Studies

Today my friend Cindy Esselman was the guest instructor in my Architecture 415 class.  We introduced watercolor and focused on shape, values, soft and hard edges.  Here is a black and white photo of an alley that was passed to the class to study. The idea was to  paint values in a series of layers from the lightest value to the darkest. The  painted value study is a simplified version of the photo.  Can you reduce the image to a few major shapes first and then add detail?

Here is the value study I did tonight from the photo.