Vignette 6: About Watercolor Brushes
Last Updated 21 Jan 2019.
There are lots of watercolor brushes. They are different shapes and made from different materials – and if you try to buy them all, you will go broke. Take it from me. I have about fifty brushes and I use less than ten. If you can only afford two, buy a #6 or #4 round and a #2 round and start with inexpensive synthetic bristle brushes -- just be sure they are watercolor brushes, not acrylic or oil brushes. What are the differences among watercolor brushes? Glad you asked.
Brush Materials. Brushes are made from a variety of materials.
Kolinsky (or Kolinsky sable) is made from a type of weasel (mink, sable, marten, weasel, and ermine are all in the weasel family). The best come from the winter coat pelt and the longest hairs come from the tail. If you are going to buy a Kolinsky brush, buy a name brand. No, they are not cheap. Kolinsky hairs are fine and tapered. This allows them to hold a lot of water and (more importantly) release that water over a longer stroke. The fibers also have good stretch and tend to be springier than synthetic fibers. I prefer DaVinci's Maestro (Kolinsky) watercolor brushes. To start, you really only need two: a round #6 or #4 and a #2. These are expensive, about $30 each, but worth it.
Red sable brushes are made from a related species of marten. They are less expensive but still quite good brushes. Be very careful with the word "sable." So-called "white sable" brushes are usually made from purely synthetic fibers. Yes, the name is misleading, but it is in common use.
Other natural fibers: Ox hair, goat hair, and squirrel hair are also used, especially for mop or wash brushes whose function is to deliver a large volume of water. For example, Hake brushes are wide flat brushes, typically goat hair, inexpensive, and good for large background washes.
Synthetic brushes use cylindrical fibers and tend to dump their water more immediately, which is less desirable. Notwithstanding, some watercolor artists prefer them. For example, Larry Lombardo insists that his students use only synthetics. Synthetic hair is harder and stiffer than natural hair and will lift more paint. I often use a synthetic brush to lift out highlights in skin tones because I find it gives more subtle highlights and is far less disruptive to the watercolor paper than a nylon scrubber. As far as synthetics go, I prefer Dynasty Black Gold brushes, especially their synthetic 311 quill variety. A #6 in this variety retails for under $15 at the time of this printing. These work well enough and if they were the only ones I owned, I could paint almost everything I paint today.
Blends: To reduce the cost of natural hair brushes, synthetic fiber or less expensive natural hair may be blended with more expensive bristles. Such brushes can be quite good and will be less expensive than Kolinsky brushes. Many artists like Robert Simmons Sapphire line. Particular brands vary and you must try them to know. Customer reviews are a good place to start, but beware of sites that have no negative reviews of their products. Amazon.com reviews are unadulterated.
To each his own. I know watercolor artists that prefer purely synthetic brushes or synthetic blends over Kolinsky brushes. Chart your own course.
Buying a brush. If you are certain of what you want, I find e-retailers to be most convenient. However, if you are new to all of this and if you want to try out a brush, nothing beats a dedicated art store with a large watercolor brush selection. Daniel Smith and Dick Blick are two nationwide retailers with knowledgeable staff who have the patience and expertise to guide you through the process. I'm sure you will find others, and nothing beats a local art store with a knowledgeable and caring staff. You should never feel rushed or abandoned. If you do, you are in the wrong place and I recommend you find somewhere else to shop. If you are lucky enough to be near a good art store, take your time, use their resources, and think through your purchasing decision. There is nothing wrong with coming back a second or third day before deciding to buy an expensive brush, and there is nothing wrong with experimenting with an inexpensive one.
Testing a brush. Agitate it in water to remove the sizing, and once this is done, snap your wrist to shake the water off the brush and on to a towel. If your art store won’t allow you to do this, shop elsewhere. Most will be happy to provide you a towel and a cup of water for this purpose (or bring your own). After you have snapped the water off take a close look at the brush end. It should come to a fine point. If the brush retains its fine point after drying, all the better, but that is not really a concern. You are always going to be painting with a wet brush. The important thing is to be sure that the damp brush holds a fine point. If it does, you will be able to paint with remarkable precision even with a larger brush.
Cleaning a brush.
The first thing you should know about cleaning brushes is that water is not enough to wash out all the paint, despite what you may have heard in some blogs and videos. Take it from a chemical engineer. You are not going to get out staining paints (e.g., phthalocyanines, quinacridones, perylenes, pyrrols, azos, etc.) with water alone. You need soap. You may use liquid or bar. For me, Ivory™ Soap in bar form is best. It is inexpensive and it is pure soap with just enough perfume to mask the base note odor and not much else. I hold the bar in my off hand and with my dominant hand I wet the brush and work it into a lather on the soap bar. (If you use liquid soap, put a small amount in the palm of your off hand and work it into a lather with a damp brush held in your dominant hand.) Do not be surprised to see loads of color coming from the brush, especially near the ferrule. Once the suds are colored, rinse the brush and soap and do it again. It usually takes at least three repeats to get the pigment out of the brush. If the soap suds remain white, you are done with the washing part.
Now rinse the brush in clear water, shake out the water with a snap, and lay the brush flat on a towel to dry.
For my expensive brushes, I add an additional step: I brush the damp bristles over a special conditioning soap and leave it to dry without rinsing. The conditioning soap will keep the brush stiff and pointed as it dries. Ivory bar soap will work for this purpose as well, but conditioning soap has some extra ingredients designed to condition the brush. A single bar of conditioning soap will last you years and its not very expensive to begin with. (Before using it again, you will need to swirl the brush in your wash water to remove the dried soap, but this takes only a few seconds. I usually tap the brush lightly on the bottom of wash bowl to be sure the stiffness is gone and the bristles have returned to their normal compliant condition.)
To dry the brushes (whether conditioned or not) they should lie flat, or even better, on a slight downhill slope with the brush end down. This will keep the water from running back into the ferrule where it will pool and cause the wood handles to swell over time and loosen the grip on the bristles. Only after the brush is dry should you put it into a brush holder, brush end up (handle down). Empty jars make great brush holders and I have one jar for each type of brush I own.
Brush Types. Brushes come in several basic types, but I only use rounds, scrubbers, flats, and riggers. You can read about mops, fans, pointers, and the like, but I don’t have much to say about these because I don’t use them. Below are some samples of a few of the brushes I use often.
Rounds. Round brushes are all purpose brushes and are the most versatile. You can paint a great watercolor painting with only round brushes. You should have at least two (#6 or #4 and #2). If you can afford three sizes, buy all three. Round brush sizes are NOT standardized and every manufacturer has its own numbering system. As a ROUGH rule of thumb, the ferrule neck (the smallest part of the brush where the hairs emerge) in mm is roughly half the size plus one. In other words, a #6 brush is roughly 6/2 + 1 = 4.0 mm at the ferrule neck. (You will note that in the above picture, the quill brush violates this rule and is much larger than a typical #6 round. Quill brushes have no metal ferrule but instead are externally bound with plastic-wrapped wire.)
Scrubbers. Scrubbers have hard nylon bristles that may be used to lift out pigment to create highlights. They may be flat, round, or filbert (oval shaped), I use them only if I can’t lift something out with a synthetic round brush, and when I do use them, I use them gingerly and as a last resort. They are tough on the paper and can easily put a hole through it. Scrubbers also tend to remove the paper’s sizing meaning that subsequent washes will color the paper differently, so scrub late not early in the painting process.
Flats. Flats are measured by width (e.g., ½”). They are used for painting individual leaves or broad blades of grass. Large flats are useful for laying down background washes or water. Synthetic flats and goat hair work just fine for this purpose. For laying down broad washes, I prefer a 1" or 2" hake brush. (I pronounce hake as HAH-kay since it is Japanese, however, hake as in cake will still get you what you want). Hake brushes are usually less than $10 even for large sizes.
Riggers. A rigger (a.k.a. liner) is a small brush of uniformly long hairs used to draw rigging on a ship, uniform lines, or other linear elements.
Filberts or Ovals have a rounded edge and are used often to paint background foliage or other blended edges.
Dip Pen. Okay, a dip pen is not a brush. But I've included it here because if you don't have a rigger or if you want an even finer line, a dip pen is the cat's meow. If I really need to do fine line or texture effects, I use a dip pen of my own construction. I discuss how on one of my project pages.
