A Painting in Progress

A step I find very important for my oil paintings is the under-painting. Once I finish a drawing on the gessoed board, I use a turpentine wash to establish values before I begin with my linseed-based oil paints.
On this leopard painting, the tonal under-painting was quite complicated. I wanted to immediately get a sense of where each limb of the tree was in the depth of field. Was the composition going to work?The under-painting gives me a feeling of the balance in the final painting. Right now I don’t see any problems for which to prepare. If there does appear to be a balance issue at this stage of a painting, I make a mental note that I will need to add light or dark to an area to compensate.