Painting natural wolf pelts

[GraveRisen]

Basically what I'm looking for is a guide/step-by-step/whatever that works through painting natural looking wolves such as....

or really anything for painting multi-tone fur. Color progression I can figure out, it's the transitions and where to start that's boggling me.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Looking at that picture I'd suggest from a basecoat of Citadel Foundation Dheneb Stone add Citadel Kommando Khaki to get the oatmeal colour.
After that I'd be swapping over to Vallejo Model Colour Burnt umber to get the darker fur with touches of Camoflage Black brown to get the real dark tones close to the shoulder blades.

 

[IdofEntity]

I'd say DR's suggestions are pretty sound. If you have an accident and accidentally place a bit of color where you didn't mean to, simply apply the same accident to the other side to give it a roughly symmetrical effect. Since wolves have semi-unique and semi-symmetrical (though not all have symmetry) fur patterns you can get away with this.

The problem is really going to be getting a convincing stipple effect for the coat. That's going to take an insane amount of patience, but it's do-able.

Great reference picture, by the way.

 

[Einion]

Color progression I can figure out, it's the transitions and where to start that's boggling me.

How to do them or what exactly?

As for where to start, I think most people would probably do something like this working from the midtone in both directions but you can easily work up from black and down from white and get much the same results.

Which route to pick is largely a matter of personal preference; mostly I work from the midtone (over grey primer), but if I were painting that wolf in particular I might start from white/off-white, then do the sort of beige colour, then the mid-grey touches here and there, then the brown and finally the black. I would mix all those colours to start and might be able to do the whole thing just by layering, but I might make small amounts of intermediate shades as I'm going along (mixed by brush on the palette paper) if it seems like it'll help.

Einion