William Merrit Chase - copy by Michael Britton

PAINTING LOUIS BETTS VIDEO DOWNLOAD WORKSHOP: The language of painting is as distinct from that of the photograph as French is to Russian. Even when painting from life beginning artists resort to the language of the photograph. The invariable result is flat, unconvincing work.

The language and process of painting is learned through copying master paintings. Don’t waste precious years reinventing the wheel. You want to acquire your foundational skill-set quickly and efficiently -- there are more compelling issues to explore than forever struggling with the basics.

Painting Louis Betts takes you step-by-step, brush stroke by brush stroke systematically through the entire process of painting portraits in oil.

My painting process is asymptotic: I begin with a general armature to establish the overall shape and proportions before structurally building up the facial forms. It’s very much like modeling in clay.

This is the èbauche—the formative beginning using a palette of only four colors.

Employing a rationale based on basic color theory you will learn how to accurately mix flesh tones. This restrictive palette of four colors enables you to efficiently master the tenets of mixing flesh hues: tint, tone, shade and temperature.

William Merritt Chase - Louis Betts - ebaucheTop and bottom images: Michael Britton, Copy of William Merritt Chase’s Louis Betts, Oil on Panel, 11x14”, 2023

The intermediate stage of portrait painting is the Pentimento. It is derived from the Italian pentrissi: to repent.

My brushwork deploys autographic mark-making with a sympathetic concordance to the underlying anatomical form. I talk a lot about this. It’s critical to both the spirit and three-dimensional, space invasive impact of painting.

The ebauche sets up the pentimento, and once all of the proportional elements and structural forms are established one can now cut loose in the finire, the overpainting. This is where the creative process flouishes.

Oil paint has a wondrous materiality. You want to fully engage it as you develop the abstract structural surface of your painting with confident, bravura brush strokes. But there is a caveat: Oil paint dries by oxidization, outside-in, which can result in an unstable paint surface that is overly susceptible to sagging and cracking. The rhealogical solution is to add an inert extender to your paint along with egg yolk which is an emulsifier. This both hastens and stabilizes the interior of the paint. This is what allowed Rembrandt, Sargent and Van Gogh to paint thickly.

You’ll experience both the triumphs and defeats that are part and parcel of the creative process. Importantly, you’ll learn how to recognize your errors and how to correct them as you journey toward creating compelling portrait paintings.

Painting Louis Betts is presented in easy-to-download chapters of roughly 20 minutes each (11 hours 10 minutes) that you save on your computer in ultra 2K definition for an introductory price of $197 until December 31st, 2023.

Ultra 2K hits the sweet spot in terms of super high resolution picture quality without the massive file sizes of 4K. Streaming videos are generally compressed, lower resolution HD and rely on stable internet connections.

William Merrit Chase - Michael Britton