Here’s Willie’s underpainting, in stages, as I progressed on his pretty tuxedo kitty cat self today.

The first thing I always complete is the background. There’s a hint of teal in his eyes and the whites of his fur, so I pulled that into the background to bring out his eyes more. I finished his background last weekend – but with everything else going on I hadn’t had a chance to show you that yet.

Today I began with his eyes, then nose – then ears. Then I stopped and giggled because that just looked silly – so there you have it. Silly tuxedo cat portrait in progress.

Stage two was getting the colored tones of his fur down. Blues, greens, reds and creamy tans are nice reflective colors on a black cat – they go down first. Then I went back and deepened just some of the darks – particularly his cheekbones and eyes. After I worked in all of the dark fur areas, I pulled medium shades into the white areas and will lighten that further with the next layer of oil.

And there you have it. I wanted to show you that second progress shot so you can really get a feel for how I paint fur. I literally paint one hair or very small groups of hairs at a time for the underpainting – and then I’ll paint probably two more layers of fur, more individually for more depth.