Golden Monkey in Oil, Work in Progress Demo

	Just because I am SUCH a glutton for embarassment, here's my next WIP project, also done previously in soft pastels. This is to show the new people that ugly happens, and you work through it to get to the good stuff. Trust me. Really. It'll all be fine. I hope. A week or so ago, I did a blue-grey tonal wash over the panel as a base color. Here I'm sketching in very quickly the base values. Because I'll need so many layers of fur, I just need to get the base colors in the fur down right now. And yes, there's a reason the eyes are a funky yellow. I'll be glazing colors like burnt sienna on top of that to give the eyes depth. So far I've mainly used french ultramarine, naples yellow, and venetian red. No blacks here, all the darks are mixed to give depth. I keep all of my old brushes, and use the nastiest, most frayed ones for base fur.
	I'm working on the fur, just layering it in a variety of colors - more layers to do yet. I'm using size 8-10 filberts and filbert combs turned on their side - not too small as bigger brushes give the illusion of softness.
	Yes, it looks funky. It's supposed to look funky at this stage (this was why the Old Masters were so secretive about their WIPs - they didn't want to frighten their customers ) The eye will be glazed much darker. I'm using a very quick and messy style of painting, not really thinking much about where the paint is going. I'm doing this for texture, and will clean up final details when I get to the detailing stage. I glazed several colors one on top of the other on the face, so there's burnt sienna, flesh tint, naples yellow, and venetian red all layered one on top of another, atop an ultramarine/umber base. This is giving the face a nice depth in person.
	I'm actually using a mix of dioxazine purple and diarylide yellow (both really strong, contrasty colors) for the fur. Still quite a ways to go, I have all of the thin detail hair to lay in yet after I get a good base coat of thick fur. I'm doing a lot of glazing (basically as in watercolor, color washes) for depth.
	Here's another update, it's getting really close now, just gotta clean up the face details.
	The final painting. I've used a filbert comb turned on its side to add the wispy fur, and added highlights throughout.