BRUSHES

Shapes

Flat

Good for laying in large areas of colour. Leaves a squared start and end to a stroke.

Bright

Stiffer bristles give better control. Short, crisp strokes

Filbert

Makes a rounded start and end to a stroke. Used for modeling smaller areas.

Short Filbert

Uncommon. Gives more control than regular filbert.

Egbert

A long, flexible, filbert brush.

Angle

Used more in watercolour for sharp edges and blending effects.

Fan

Good for blending and softening edges of other strokes. Often used for trees and shrubbery, etc.

Round

Great for special strokes, finer detail, etc. Very useful brushes.

Liner, Rigger

Very long hairs, usually made only in the smallest sizes. Meant for long lines, tree branches etc.

One Stroke

A flat watercolour brush with long hair. The longer hair holds a lot of colour and is good for blending, glazing, laying in  large areas, etc.

Mop

A larger, broad watercolour brush meant for blending, laying in large areas a\etc.

Hair

The bristles are generically referred to as “hair” in the brush industry and they can be in any combination of soft, stiff, natural and synthetic.

Natural

A wide range of natural hair is now being used:

Sable, Hog’s bristle, Mongoose, Squirrel, Goat, Badger, etc. Many natural bristles have split ends, enabling the brush to hold more paint.

Natural bristle is often avoided for water media (acrylic, watercolour and water soluble oil), since it absorbs water which causes a loss of stiffness.

Synthetic

Virtually every natural hair has its synthetic counterpart, many equally as good, if not better. The material used varies from the economical White Taklon to high quality Japanese Toray. It is not usually possible, except with the cheaper synthetics like Taklon, to tell the difference and very few companies actually tell you what they are made of.

Silicone

Solid silicone brushes with variously shaped blades for decorative strokes.

What to watch for when buying brushes:

• Softer, synthetic bristles tend to be preferred for acrylic paint because acrylic paint tends to be softer than oil (lower viscosity).

·      Synthetic bristles tend to clean easier.

·       Natural bristle tends to absorb water and lose stiffness when used with water based paint (acrylic and water soluble oil paints).

• Natural and synthetic Sable brushes made for water colours are often secured with a glue that can be dissolved by the oil in oil paint. When buying brushes to use with oil paint it is best to stick with those made for oil paint or oil and water colours.

• Bristle, natural or synthetic, comes in a range of quality. The best bristle comes from China and has split ends. Good bristle brushes are made with the hair bending inward and interlocking. Some companies (Escoda, for one) heat treat their brushes to help them hold their shape. Some cheaper natural bristle brushes are trimmed to shape, thus negating the advantage of their split ends. Synthetic bristle don’t have split ends anyway so are all trimmed to shape. Nevertheless, synthetic brushes can be just as good as those made with natural bristle, some are even better.

• The best watercolour brushes use a blend of filament sizes, which tend to hold more paint.

• Watercolour brushes tend to have shorter handles (5 – 6”) for use on a flat surface on table.  Oil and acrylic brush handles tend to have longer handles (around 9”) to allow artists to stand back from the painting surface.

• All manufacturers number their brushes. However, there are no standards, so you cannot use the numbering to compare brushes between manufacturers. In fact, some of them seem to lack consistency between their own product lines. Fortunately, most include the brush dimensions, in millimeters, in their product information.

Brands, what to buy

The first thing to realize when buying brushes, is that neither price, nor appearance are good indicators of quality. And, secondly, If you find the prices surprising, just remember that a great deal of hand-crafting still goes into the making of a good brush.

If you are just beginning to paint, start with a modest brush collection. Buy a few reasonably good brushes and add to your collection as you gain experience. A large brush collection is not a requirement. I know of one very successful oil painting artist whose entire brush collection consists of a 79 cent 1” hardware brush, a cheap No. 4 bristle brush, a $1 liner brush and a $5 painting knife. On the other hand, my own brush collection would probably cost near $1000 to replace. With the benefit of experience, of course, I would now just buy the brushes I really need for much less than that.

A brush should feel good in your hand. It should immediately make you want to paint. Before you buy It is admissible to run the brush over your fingers to test the stiffness and “snap” of it. I wouldn’t overdo that with watercolour brushes, however, since some artists dislike having their watercolour brushes touched by oily hands.

Oil & Acrylic

I would suggest the following to start out:

• A No. 4 and No.10 bristle filberts
• A No. 6 or 10 White Taklon flat brush
• One liner brush, No. 1 or 2

Watercolour

You probably wouldn’t need as many brushes for water colour painting.  As a start I would suggest:

• A 1” flat watercolour brush. This is the workhorse brush for watercolour. It’s the one that you probably use the most and it should be a fairly good one. It does not have to be Sable, however.
• A good quality No. 6 to 10 round brush. Very useful.
• A No. 1 or 2 rigger brush that you should hide away from yourself and only bring out when nothing else will do.

Other brushes

Some other brushes that come in handy are:

• Hake Brushes:  These Japanese brushes are generally made of Goat hair. They are good for wetting grounds, applying gesso, etc. Buy the better ones (usually about $4 to $8 each) otherwise you will be continually lifting hairs out of your work.
• A good quality 2” hardware brush. They come in handy for all sorts of jobs that you don’t want to use your expensive brushes for.

Brands

OK, so what brands have top approval ratings:

• Escoda: Made in Spain. Excellent brushes at good prices.

• Princeton: Very good brushes at very reasonable prices.

• Winsor & Newton: Still one of the top brands on the market.

• Robert Simmons, Jack Richeson: Both brands are very highly rated, but be prepared to pay a much higher price for the good name. I don’t have personal experience with either of them

• Silver Brush: Also highly rated.

Some of the manufacturers have excellent web sites with a great deal of information about their products and are worth checking out. Personally, after some research and much wasted money on poor brands, I settled on three companies, Princeton, Escoda and Winsor & Newton, that I know will give me good brushes at reasonable prices.

Care

• Try not to get paint in the bristles right up to the ferrule. It is easy for paint to build up there over time and ruin the brush.

• Never leave a brush soaking in water or solvent for long periods of time.

• When using acrylic paint, never lay a brush down with paint in it; acrylic paint dries quite quickly and once dry, is no longer soluble.

• Never stand a brush up on its hair, especially the smaller sizes and softer brushes.  The hairs can acquire a bend in a very short time that is nearly impossible to remove.

• Clean watercolour, acrylic and water-soluble oil brushes with mild soap and warm (not hot) water. Oil brushes should be cleaned with mineral spirits first, then with soap and water.

• A bar of “Sunlight” soap works well. Avoid harsh detergents. There are brush cleaning products available that work well, such as “The Master’s” Brush Cleaner and Preservative. Some people claim that soap harms watercolour brushes and that they should only be cleaned with pure water. Some even suggest that you should never handle the hairs because your fingers leave oil on them that supposedly will interfere with paint handling ability.

• After cleaning, reshape the hairs and lay the brush down with the handle slightly raised so that water remaining in the hairs will not run into the handle (which can cause a loose ferrule).  The hairs can be reshaped with a bit of soapy water on your fingers, or with gum Arabic.

• If you are inclined to push your brushes onto the canvas, bending and splaying out the hairs, then I would advise you to purchase a few very cheap bristle brushes for that use. Nothing can ruin an expensive brush faster than this. This is also true of painting with the side of the brush, scraping it across the rough canvas. This is a common method of achieving soft edges with acrylic paint, and is a very legitimate painting technique, but leave the job up to your cheaper bristle filberts, not your expensive sables.