My Brushes

Just a short post to talk about my favorite brushes and why it doesn’t pay to be cheap.

Beginning with my favorite brush; a Broken Toad size 1. This i by far the best brush I have ever used. I use it for almost everything, from base coating to highlighting and fine detail, yes even eyes and very fine lines. Its made of Siberian male Kolinsky sable hair, just like the well-known Winsor & Newton brushes and is quite expensive compared to synthetic fiber brushes, probably because animals are put down to make a brush. The Siberian Kolinsky is a weasel of sorts, but when considering the awesome result, it could be made from the eyelashes of virgin unicorns and I’d still buy it!

I have recently acquired a couple of the ordinary Winsor & Newton series 7 brushes, including one of their so-called ‘miniatures series’. The ordinary W&N series 7 is excellent, but compared to Broken Toad it is slightly softer (more bendy), which means I tend to prefer the Broken Toad, the difference is minor though, so it is a matter of acquired taste. The miniature series have very short hairs and a very thin tip, and so they do not hold very much paint and paint transfer from the brush to the model is too restricted for my usage. In short, I find the miniature series are utter crap.

My second best brush is a dedicated wash brush from Games Workshop. Its quite large with a round and broad tip, and so it holds a lot of paint, making it very suitable for washing and inking. The trick to using this brush is to soak up a lot of wash in the brush, then applying an excess amount of wash to the model. Then use the brush again to suck up excess amounts of wash on the raised part of the model where you do not want wash or ink to settle. This type of apply and withdraw can be done repeatedly, and makes it very easy to control the amount of wash or ink applied.

I also have a set of synthetics as well. First, a rather large Army Painter size Regiment, which I use for base coating models. Overall, I think Army Painter makes a good series of synthetics. I also have a couple of old GW brushes that I use for metallics, NEVER USE sable hair brushes for metallics, as metallic paint is often made of chemicals that ruin the brush much faster than regular paint, and the small metallic pigments get stuck in the ferule.

Two glasses of water a day, keeps the filth away..

I always use two glasses of water, one with ‘dirty water’ used to clean brushes and a ‘pure water’ for thinning of paint and final cleaning of brushes after the initial rough rinse in ‘dirty water’. And change the water regularly, as a rule it should at least be changed every time you open a beer.

A special mention also to my wet palette – in fact I like it so much, I gave it its own post.