All the Strange Hours » bristle brushes

A few items from Natural Pigments

David — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:29:08 +0000

I’ve bought some art stuff lately, so I thought I’d post some mini-reviews, of which this is the first. Here is some stuff from Natural Pigments. Alas, I get no kickbacks if you buy this stuff. I also bought some lead white primer, but I haven’t used it yet so you’ll just have to wait.

Badger brush set

Badger hair is traditional for making brushes used for blending oil paint, so I broke down and bought this set from Natural Pigments. There is a fan, a round, and two sizes of flats. So far, I’ve just tried the round, but for blending it is just lovely. I had been doing most blending with a synthetic round, and wow! The badger beats that by a mile. Highly recommended if you paint in a style that involves rendering. I wish I’d bought these a long time ago.

#2 Bristle flat brushes

These were cheap, so I bought a few. The handles are nicely laquered in a natural wood color. The ferules are firmly set and double crimped. The brush hairs are well set (flags facing inward), with the annoyance of a few stray hairs that needed trimming. The brushes hold their shape under heavy use and have the right level of resistance when moving paint. These are an excellent value for inexpensive brushes.

Velazquez medium

This is calcite ground with a blend of bodied and refined linseed oils. I’ve made basically the same stuff myself, but it’s convenient to have some already made up in a jar. It’s light gray and the consistency of oil paint. Mixed with paint it adds no color, but makes it more transparent. This is a good medium for velaturas and for making strongly tinting pigments less strong without losing body. I haven’t noticed that it has much effect on the brushing properties of the paint. They have a similar medium that’s specifically for impasto, but that’s not how I paint. This stuff won’t magically let you paint like Velazquez, but it is useful and inexpensive.

Brush cleaning

David — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:05:47 +0000

I don’t consider myself to be any kind of expert on brushes. I use mostly natural hair bristle brushes and synthetic sables (I’m too rough on natural sables for them to be cost-effective for most purpose). When painting, I try to keep the paint at the end of the brush, away from the ferrule. Once there’s a noticeable amount of paint in the ferrule, the brush will probably stop holding its shape.

I clean bristles by wiping on a cloth, then washing in a linseed-based brush soap (the excellent “Ugly Dog” soap from Studio Products). It’s important to keep washing, very thoroughly, until all the paint is completely gone.

With synthetic sables, I use Ivory Soap (a white hand soap without much in the way of perfumes or other additives). Once clean, sable rounds can be “pointed” back to shape by smacking them lightly against a hard surface.

Nothing sophisticated, but it seems to work for me.

Useless post about brushes

David — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:24:34 +0000

Kim writes:

[D]o you have any bristle brushes that you favor? I am very frustrated trying to find good bristles anymore…even so-called high-end brushes can have problems quickly with stray hairs or not cupped properly..not holding their shape…hard to control. Perhaps I should be switching to softer brushes toward the finish…but I like using the strength of a bristle.

I’m not a great source on bristle brushes. People who seem to know what they are talking about usually agree only that it’s really hard to find good bristles these days, and that a good batch from one manufacturer doesn’t have much to do with the whether the next batch will be any good.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but I really just have the same frustrations that you do. That’s why I haven’t written any posts on the subject at my blog. I do tend to use synthetic sables for the later stages of most work.

So do any readers know of any reliably good brands of bristle brushes?