Hierarchy System

Copy/paste from http://www.furaffinity.net/view/551994/#cid:3151445

A hierarchy system is where you take building block of a picture (like value, or line, or color, or detail, or whatever) and use it to explain a hierarchy. Examples of hierarchy include depth, relevance, or anything else you want to convey.

An example of a hierarchy system could be height used to show social importance. The king would be 50 feet tall, the prince (though maybe still a child) would be 30 feet tall, the duke would be 20 feet tall, and the peons would tiny little 6 foot tall people.

What I recommend for this picture, since there's so many overlapping of forms, is a hierarchy system to show depth. Two common methods are line and value. Here's some quick and dirty examples:

Also, there's nothing preventing you from using more than one system at once!

If you were to use something like detail to illustrate depth, it would be best to figure it out from the beginning so you didn't waste work by erasing it. I'm sure if you think about it, there are a million more ways you could use a hierarchy system.

It's important to remember that when making a hierarchy system, you should do your best to break the contrast thresholds. That means lines in each hierarchy should be twice or half as thick, sizes should be twice or half dimensions, and etc. In fact, it's so important that I explained Simultaneous Contrast first, just so I could mention this. Why put a system in place that's meant to clarify the image if it isn't easily visible?