Realistic Fur - Roareye Black

First off, you'll need a pixel art with a sizable area for you to texture. I'll be using this headshot cut of my own character. Reasons for needing a little bit of room (Especially on your first time) will be explained later. You will also need a palette ready, always have 1 more shade than you need. In this case I'll need 6 main colour shades so I have 7.


Make the part you're about to recolour a completely different colour so it's easier to see. Now take the lightest colour and go to the bottom of the area you want to colour. I'm going to recolour the head so I've started at the bottom of the teal parts of the head. Now you need to work on both random placement and logic for this part. When you start, you need to visualise an individual hair. Then draw that hair as high as it goes (In the example of fur, it won't go too high). Once you have drawn that single hair, draw another near it. Don't be afraid if they overlap, if they make a strange mess or whatever. Just imagine all these light shaded hairs sprouting from the bottom upwards. While you're with the lightest shade, also do some light hairs in the places where the light will hit the character most.
Once you've done that, then go just above it and make the rest of the head's fur. You use the exact same method but this time the hair enters the scalp from the head instead of the lowest border.


Now take the second lightest tone and do the same thing. This time you can fill in blanks and don't be afraid to cover over any of the lightest tone you've put down. The whole point is to just layer the work by placing the hairs where you think they will go. It will look messy at first, but I will show you how to finalise it properly too, don't worry.
Do the same with the other tones, remembering that as you go to the darker tones to focus more on the areas of the face that would get less light than the areas that would hit the light the most. However a few dark fure lines in the lighter areas does add to the overall illusion of depth.

Now use the Rubber Tool trick and replace all of the lightest tone with the second lightest tone. This will make your work easier to see and easier to edit for the next part.
Now you need to smoothen the fur out so it's a little more controlled and moves more like real fur. This may be easier for you if you find a photograph of real fur (Say a cat's face) to see how fur really flows. In this piece, the fur will follow the curves of the face as shown by the red arrowed face above.

Now on my picture, the lightest tone (Out of the 6 remaining) looks fine. It is still actually quite spread out and is still mostly in the areas where the light will hit the character. So I'll skip it and move onto the second lightest tone (Though it's the same method for all tones if you need to edit your lightest tone). Now to make this work, you need to focus on a small area (At the moment I'm focussing on the forehead and the inner-eyebrows) and you need to make lines following the red arrow directions all the way over. This will require you to consider whether or not you want certain tones, which you can overlap, to be showing in a specific area or not. If you don't think a certain tone should be somewhere, the go over it, if you prefer it then leave it in.
One you have finished you should get an effect similar to the one worked into the forehead (Also enlarged so you can see easier). For this you don't have to work through the entire colour palette, just to the effect you want. The forehead won't have the darker shades all the way down it, but will have more closer to the top of the forehead with the hair.

Once you've done that, you'll have completed that area of the face. Now you can do it again on the muzzle, the ears and any other bodypart requiring fur. It's exactly the same technique all over. It's a bit lengthy but it definately gives the best results.