The Foxes

I enjoyed painting the foxes even though I was anticipating quite a struggle.  I figured that the main problem would be the transparency of the raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and dark raw umber.

I painted the white fur like I usually do, with a gray undercoat then working up slowly through grays and beiges to white.

But I tried something different for the red fur.  I worked a small section at a time, beginning with the parts farther from the viewer and working forward.  For each section, I undercoated with white then immediately came back - with a very light touch - into the wet white paint with the transaparent colors.  They mixed and blended with the white on the canvas to create a smooth light colored base.  Then when the base dried I put layers of transparent fur strokes with the colors.  This method worked pretty well.

I also tried to be more dramatic than I usually am with the values, and I need to do this more often.