A Few Choice Words About Brushes November 19, 2000
Sharon and I are frequently asked, “What brushes should I buy?” We reply: “What size paintings will you be doing?” Almost always we hear, “What difference does it make?” Think for a moment about painting an eighth sheet painting (approximately 7.5” x 10”). If, for this painting, you choose round brushes sizes 1 and 3, angular brushes size 1/4” and 3/8,” flat brushes 1/2” and 3/4” and Filbert brushes sizes 6 and 8, when you decide to do the same painting ina quarter sheet format, every brush you used for the first painting with a half inch flat will need to be done with a 3/4” brush in the quarter sheet painting. Things you did with the 3/4” brush in the first painting will now need to be done with a 1” brush. The same will apply to the sizes of rounds and angulars. If you think about it, using the same size brush in a larger painting to do the same task will result in doing two or three strokes of the brush for each one stroke you made in the smaller painting. This of course will result in a change in the look or style your painting will have.
When choosing brush sizes for a painting, we must give thought to what our painting will include. If our painting will include large wash areas such as skies, bodies of water, etc. we must include a relative large brush for that purpose. Opinions vary as to which type large brush should be used. While any large brush will work, I tend to use flats and angulars for this purpose. The bushy goat hair brush is a good choice for skies but is not as useful for other wash applications. As you may know, Sharon and I choose artificial hair brushes because of their allowing of themselves to be made “thirsty” and removing pigments we have painted a little too dark a value. We include two bristle brushes. One we call “Breakup, Cleanup.” These we use to break up think paint for darker values and to clean out the wells on our palette. The second bristle brush we call the “mean brush.” We scrub with that brush to remove paint. For very fine lines, we sometimes do that between two pieces of masking tape.
If you have questions email us at rlwatercolor71@aol.com.
Enjoy painting!
Robert and Sharon
Robert Long Watercolors
12273 Emerald Coast Parkway, Unit 120 • Destin, FL 32550
Phone (850) 837-3220 • Fax (850) 837-3770
E-mail us: rlwatercolor71@aol.com
http://www.robertlongwatercolors.com