Ocelot Painting So far..

So this is the first time I've attempted a grisaille painting method on a wildlife painting. I'm currently working on the tonal greyscale painting and then I'm going to glaze in the colour later. Here are the first three stages:

In the first stage I use diluted paint to sketch out the ocelot on the canvas along with a quick wash of the background.

Once this was dry I roughed out the base tones of the ocelot along with the markings. This stage actually took forever to dry so in future I'm thinking of adding a little liquin to the paint I'm using. Liquin is a thin medium which is added to paint for glazing but which also speeds up the drying time of paint.

This is where the painting is at following the second layer of paint. The aim at this stage was to make sure the background is dark and that the base tones, shapes, and markings of the ocelot are done to where details can then be worked in. Generally this will mean the lightest highlights and darks will not yet be present and the tones themselves are a couple of shades darker so I can put in the lighter fur details later.