Blocking in colour
I let the background rest a bit once I’ve blocked in the basic light, and create a new layer on which I’ll start to block in the wolf. To get a better overview of the painting, I go to Window> Arrange> New window for redridinghood.psd. That way I get a new window of the same painting, which I can scale down to see the bigger picture. The same technique is applied to the wolf as to the background. I start off by painting in a greyish brown silhouette of the wolf, that serves as the main underpainting. From that base, I go to more grey tones as well as to more brown tones, as I start to chisel out the shapes. I try to avoid black and white, but always work with richer tones. White and black are best kept for absolute extremes, such as highlights in eyes.