Fur Demo Traditional Painting

[dpaint]

I’ve seen a lot of people struggling with fur in the art threads lately, so I thought I’d make a demo for people to help them out with one way of approaching painting fur. I had taken this picture of a red wolf from a zoo in CA and I thought it would make a good fur demo. The picture is old so the res is pretty low but it will work for this. I will make another one painting it with Photoshop when I have some more time. But the general principles will be the same.
The size of this painting is 10x12 inches
and I am working in oils my palette consists of Viridian, Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Permanent, Cad Red Light, Cad Yellow Light, and Titanium White

Image 01
The first thing I did was draw the bust of the wolf with a brush getting the general shape down quickly.

Images 02-05,
Then I looked for the big color and value changes and blocked those in ignoring details and edge quality at this point.
Images 06 -08
Next I start to modify those big shapes by adjusting the smaller changes within them and paying attention to their edges.
Images09-10
The last thing I do is scrub in a background so I can paint the highlights and paint the details and refine the proportions where I think they need it.

Complete time for this is two hours

[Wingal]

Very cool. Thank you! Looking forward to the next one =D

[Quigleyer]

Do you document your process in your pieces often? I've seen some of your finished stuff, but I don't know if I've seen all that much progress work, which looks really valuable. I'm not trying to nag you here, and I appreciate this enough as is :).

Thanks for what you do around here, man. Please keep it up as well!

[Danilo]

I think it needs more details on the face, some sharp accents of light maybe

[dpaint]

I think it needs more details on the face, some sharp accents of light maybe

The beauty of this approach is you can add details to your liking as long as you don't destroy the underlying shapes of value and color.
This is a fast way to make a finished painting and trains your eye to see the abstract shapes and works for any style of painting.

[dpaint]

Do you document your process in your pieces often? I've seen some of your finished stuff, but I don't know if I've seen all that much progress work, which looks really valuable. I'm not trying to nag you here, and I appreciate this enough as is :).

Thanks for what you do around here, man. Please keep it up as well!

Thanks.
Actually I do; I have a 16 traditional landscape demos and one digital on on my blog (http://artandinfluence.blogspot.com/search/label/art%20demo)
There are only 7 per page so when you ge to the bottom click on older to see more. I've posted a couple more here in tutorials with some reposted from the blog