There are a lot of brushes out there. It may take a while to figure out which ones are right for you, so here are some tips for you:

Start with a small selection of good brushes. The sizes you need are dictated by the size of surface you will be working on, and the type of mark you wish to make. It will soon be apparent which brushes you are missing, and these can then be purchased.

Avoid nasty brushes. Your brush is your contact with the surface – it should respond to your every wish! A good brush will do so, and, with the right care, last many years. A bad brush will not, and is a waste of money, no matter how cheap it is. We have inexpensive brushes which will perform well.

Make sure the brush you buy is suitable for the work you want to do. As a general rule, synthetic brushes work well with acrylic paints, hog hair for oilcolour, and natural hair brushes for watercolour; however, for example, if you’re scumbling (applying small amounts of colour in a circular scrubbing motion) with acrylic paint, a synthetic brush will “fur-up” in no time, so a hog hair brush is more suitable. Talk with us about how you want to apply the colour, and we can suggest a suitable brush.

Look after your brush. Although we’d love you buying new brushes every time you started a painting, a good brush is a precious tool and will not only last longer with proper cleaning, it will become an extension of your touch as it wears into your painting method.

Most good artist’s brushes are hand made, so select your brush carefully - they will each be slightly different.

We stock over 100 different types of brush in sizes from 10/0 to 300mm wide! By far our most preferred brush maker is da Vinci from Germany, a family of brush-makers for generations, making over 10,000 brushes a day by both hand and specially designed machine. They rock!

Round
Round brushes are the original painting brush shape. They hold the biggest reservoir of colour, and vary from large, blunt-ended glazing brushes to ultra-fine detail brushes.

Flat/Bright
In the 19th Century, flat brushes, used for lettering, became popular with plein-aire painters and the Impressionists, who were not interested in their brush holding a large amount of paint so much as specific mark-making - broken light effects and a dabbed colour. Flats are good for spreading colour. A large flat brush is called a mottler, and these are generally used for varnishing, softening, and large area painting.

Filbert
In the second half of the 19th Century, a renewed interest in figure painting and modelling flesh, by the Pre-Raphaelites and Victorian painters, lead to the development of the filbert brush. These painters found that a flat brush left its shape in the wet paint, so was less than perfect for blending. Rubbing their flat brushes back and forwards on stone steps worn them into a “cat’s tongue” shape, though this shape is now made by arranging the hair by hand. The filbert is perhaps the most versatile, being a combination of a flat and a round. It can blend, spread colour, draw, and is excellent for cutting-in.

Natural hair
Natural hair brushes possess unique characteristics, such as fluid-carrying capacity, softness and spring that make them the sole choice for many watercolour artists and a precious tool for oil painters. The main types of natural hair are:
- Red Sable is both soft and strong, with excellent colour-carrying qualities that make it the first choice for many watercolour artists.
- Black Sable combines the softness of red sable with the robustness of hog hair, making it ideal for wet-in-wet blending with oilcolour.
- Ox hair is a hardwearing, soft hair that is good for oilcolour blending and impasto work, and ideal for gouache. It is also makes a useful watercolour brush.
- Squirrel is very soft and holds the greatest amount of water of all the hair types, so makes the perfect watercolour wash brush.
- Badger hair has a slightly wavy character that imparts a gentle resistance essential for softening and blending of oilcolour in painting or traditional faux effects.

Hog Hair or Bristle
Hog bristle, in a variety of qualities, is the work-horse of oil painting. It is robust enough to resist wear on abrasive surfaces like canvas, absorbent enough to wipe back layers, and yet good quality bristle is soft enough to respond to delicate strokes. The more expensive bristle brushes have an inwardly curved shape that is made by interlocking the bristles - properly cleaned, these brushes will retain its shape even after much use and many washings.

Synthetic
Synthetic brushes are ideally suited for acrylic painting, and are available in a large range of strengths – from stiff impasto brushes through to soft glazing brushes. For oil painting they offer a cheaper alternative to soft natural hair brushes used for detail and blending.
Da Vinci are the only brush manufacturer making synthetic brushes in Europe. Their unique
fibre-blending technology produces synthetic brushes that draw fluid up in a similar fashion to natural hair. These “new generation” synthetic brushes perform almost the same as natural hair, last longer, and cost less, helping to preserve the world’s precious natural hair resources, such as sable.

Acrylic colour is the hardest on your brush, and care should be taken not to let the paint dry in the brush-head. Wipe the brush-head with a damp cloth, removing the bulk of the colour, rinse with water, and thoroughly clean using da Vinci’s special brush-cleaning soap and warm water. Rinse, shape the brush-head, and lie flat to dry.

For oilcolour, simply wipe excess paint from the brush head with linseed oil and a rag, and clean using da Vinci brush-cleaning soap and warm water, working the lather from ferrule to tip, paying special attention to pigment that sticks around the ferrule, until the lather is clean. Make sure all soap is rinsed from the brush head, shape it and lay it out to dry. Note that no turps has been used.

Brushes should not be left standing in a jar of water/turps, as this can irreparably damage the
brush-head and wooden handle. When using acrylics, lay your brushes in a shallow water-filled dish while working. If you’re leaving your oilpainting brushes for a while, dip them in linseed oil. Don’t clean brushes with turpentine - just imagine washing YOUR hair with it!

Frizzy brushes
Here's an old tip for dealing with frizzy brushes. After a thorough cleaning using a brush cleaning soap (which will condition as well as clean) and paying special attention to where the hair meets the ferrule, shape the brush and tie a thin strip of cotton round the brush head so that it dries in shape.
This works very well with hog/bristle brushes. For synthetic brushes, after cleaning, one can steam the hair over a boiling kettle (watch your fingers, children!) or dip the brush head into just boiled water before tying it in shape.