Brushes

In this short article I expressed my own opinion, shared my previous experience and gave few recommendations on 'How to select a proper brush'.

Every artist should build up a collection of various brushes so they will help achieve a wide range of exciting paint effects.

Artists' brushes come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes indeed. Each one of them corresponds to a particular purpose they were designed for. They could be made out of multiple different kinds of natural bristles or synthetic fibre. That is the reason that the difference in price between different types of bristle and brands can be considerable. Available choice is really wide. However, my own experience says that, the decision as to which to buy and use is a personal pursuit, solely depending on trial and error. From start, it would not be a bad idea to experiment with several different types of brushes at a time in order to get clearer understanding which to use.

Sizes: small and large

Almost all of types of brushes are available in a rather wide range of sizes. For artists' further convenience they are usually numbered. Though it is always worth to keep it in mind that different manufactures has a slightly different measuring system of their own. Which actually means that No.1 brush made by manufacturer A is not necessarily precisely of the same size made by the manufacturer B. Furthermore sizes of some of the flat brushes might be specified in the terms of the total bristle width, rather then numbers.

Types of brush

Type of brush basically corresponds to the specific kind of mark it produces. So it is important to choose a right type of brush in order to achieve desired effects. Though if you already have several basic brush types, they probably would be good enough to start with.

Round brushes

Round – is a brush with a rounded ferrule. This is widely used, general purpose type of brushes containing a full bristle head, which (please keep it in mind) might hold a lot of paint. But still, large rounds are pretty much useful for wide expanses of colour.

Flat brushes

This type of brushes has a flattened ferrule with a square-cut bristle head. Since wide bristles are very good for applying paint in short dubs and for laying ideally flat areas of colour. The narrow edge of the bristles is rather helpful for making thinner lines indeed.

Note that sometimes 'flat' with very short bristles is also called 'bright'.

Filbert brushes

Lay somewhere between 'flat' and 'round'. Usually filbert has a flattened ferrule with tapered bristles. This type of brush is widely used since it combines the functions of the other brush types.

Fan brushes

Nicely shaped fan brush, also called blender, should used primarily for smooth colour blending. However allows to achieve different effects especially with oil.

Oil painting brushes are usually made of natural bristle – hog's hair. However there are few excellent synthetic bashes available on the market now. Some of the synthetic brushes were specially developed to be used with acrylic paints while others perfectly suite oil and acrylic.

Taking care of your brushes

Since oil painting brushes are traditionally produced from a natural bristle – paint should never be allowed to dry on the brush, though even synthetic brushes are hard to clean once the paint dries. After each and every painting session, clean you brushes very carefully by first wiping the remaining colour with paper, then brushes used with oil paint should be rinsed in a white spirit or any other oil solvent or cleaning agent you use, wiped clean and washed in warm water with liquid soap. Rinse the brush well then shake it to dry water.

Acrylic brushes should only be washed using warm water and liquid soap. Since acrylic paint dries dramatically fast it would not be a bad idea to keep those brushes moist during your painting session. If it happened and you've let acrylic paint dry on the brush by any chance, do not panic, just soak the bristles overnight in spirits, this will soften the paint and then washed as usual.

Hope you found this helpful.

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