Oil Color Painting Portrait Process

Yes, it's a very good painting demonstration.

Well I can't decide for sure. What it does confirm for me is my constant gripe about demonstrations and tutorials on the internet where almost invariably the demonstrator fails to communicate with the audience. It's not just a failure to speak - it can be a failure to show - just hold that tube of paint up so I can see what it is!! It drives me nuts when they fail to tell you basic information - for example: Medium, colours being used', the support (type of paper, board etc), source material etc. Even when they do tell you it is often mumbled to the extent that you can't make out what they are saying. This is especially so when the products are unfamiliar to you or are foreign leaving the spelling open to conjecture. Then there is their palette ( I love to see how they mix their paints and the consistency) but so many fail to show it. Gripe over.,

I watched about three quarters of it - this isn't filmed in real time to start with; there are one or two leaps, most not noticeable - but one is. And I do think it's oil - in fact, why would you say it was if it wasn't? The paint didn't handle like acrylic - too much blending, in one passage blending with a painting knife in a way which would be very difficult to do in acrylic. Some soft brushes are used, notably in the background; but most of the brushes are hogs. Paint not picking up the layers below - well.... that's the essence of alla prima painting: if you couldn't lay films of paint over that which you'd laid down before, you couldn't do it; just don't scrub it.... Some of the paint in the background formed definite ridges on application, too - acrylic doesn't do that. The site from which it comes is weibo.com, a Chinese site - the use of oil paint is extremely common on these sites, because oils sell better, or such is the theory. I don't know anything about the "Fine Art Academy" from which the painting comes, but suspect it's just a name for one of the Chinese painting factories - very clever, very skilled; but without seeing the model from whom the artist worked - not especially revealing. It was a useful demonstration of brush-work - and if that's what you want, it's fine. If you were after what Michael wanted - not so much. For myself, I have to say the fascination wore off fairly soon - there was some interest in watching how the painter was going to get the right eye to align, with which he seemed to have a little trouble (as one would), and if he was going to able to get the lit side of the nose to work, which eventually he did. But after he'd solved most of his major technical problems, which he had by just after the half-way stage, fascination faltered so far as I was concerned.

I'm not intending to disparage the site, by the way - it has a range of video demonstrations on YouTube which would be useful for beginners, especially; on the whole, incidentally, I notice that Chinese and Russian artists very rarely seem to use acrylics; so it would have surprised me if this artist did.