1. Oil Painting Brushes Online India
2. Art Brushes For Oil Painting
3. Buy Oil Painting Brushes Online

Art Lesson 6, Part 1

1. Oil paint brushes require durability, control and colour holding for smooth, flexible strokes. Daler-Rowney offers a mixture of soft paint brush heads and stiffer bristles in both natural and synthetic hair. Soft sable brushes are suited to fine art and detailing techniques such as those used in portraiture, while harder bristles like Chungking.
2. Never store your brushes vertically in Oil or in any solvent. Before your next painting session, just wipe off the oil from the brush and it’s ready to be used. When your brushes have been set aside for a long time, you should clean them properly. To do so, you can use Solvents or hand soap, but there are downsides to using them – solvents.

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In this lesson, you will discover How to Choose Brushes for Oil Painting

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How to Choose Brushes for Oil Painting

“How to Choose Brushes for Oil Painting” is an important topic for a fine artist. Have you seen the huge variety of brushes they offer at art supply stores? Yes, it’s totally confusing. All the natural and synthetic brushes of different shapes, sizes, brands, and qualities – there are too many choices.

With shapes alone, at least 10 types were invented, as the typical brush shape used by the Old Masters was a Round Brush, nothing exotic. Titian, for example, is well known for his desire to be different from Michelangelo and Raphael. Reportedly he had his brushes unkempt as a broom.

Let’s look at the most popular types of brush shapes that we can choose from:

• Round Brush. There are two sizes of Round Brushes.
• Flat Brush. There are also small and bigger sizes of Flat Brushes.
• Bright Brush. There are three sizes of Bright Brushes. This brush is actually a short version of a Flat Brush.
• Angle Brush.
• Filbert Brush. This is like a flat brush, only with a rounded shape.

Each type of brush produces a different stroke. But let’s be honest, it is enough to have just two types of brush sizes to create impressive and diverse strokes. It is the manufacturers’ wish that we buy many kinds of brushes, that’s why they make them seem vital. Actually, Round and Flat brushes can satisfy your needs entirely. I use Flat brushes more often than Round, but it is more out of habit and I can easily do all of my artworks with nothing but Round brushes of different sizes.

Do we need all shapes? Not at all. It’s perfectly fine to have round brushes and flat brushes – they can satisfy our needs entirely.

So, what are the best materials for brushes? In the Old Masters .Academy ™ we will use both natural and synthetic types of brushes, appropriate for different purposes.

This table, that you can find in your Workbook, helps us understand what the best use is for each particular brush.

They are placed in order, from the most expensive to the least expensive.

If you have just one type of brush, let’s say only Hog brushes of different sizes, you can certainly apply them in any of the processes listed above – not only in processes that are mentioned as suitable, but also in glazing and varnishing. And if you have more appropriate type of brushes for each type of task – use them. If not, it’s ok, deal with what you have.

Let’s look at each brush type, one by one.

Sable Brushes

Sable Brushes are expensive but worth the price. They are long lasting (if you carefully maintain them); they do their job perfectly and are just pleasant to use. These brushes hold their shape when loaded with paint, they will bend and return to their original shape, stroke after stroke. Pony and Squirrel brushes also have soft hair, but they are too soft, they do not keep their shape and are inappropriate for oil painting.

Choose Russian Sable, Kolinsky, Red Sable or Black Sable, whatever you find more appealing to you; they perform great, in similar ways.

Sable brushes have soft, flexible hairs that are ideal for applying thin glazes.

It is possible to use Sable brushes for impasto layers as well. They work excellently in detailed passages, as they form a sharp point which helps you achieve precise strokes.

You can also use them for varnishing, however that would be an uneconomical decision – you need to have individual brushes for varnishing that are absolutely unadulterated and doesn’t contain any particles from oil paints.

Sable brushes are also perfect for painting smooth layers. I wouldn’t create sketches using scumbling and drybrush methods with such costly and delicate brushes. More rigid brushes, that we will look at a bit later, should be chosen for these purposes.

Mongoose Brushes

Oil Painting Brushes Online India

Mongoose Brushes are very much similar to Sable Brushes in performance, but are slightly less soft. Mongoose hair is responsive and firm, yet delicate to the touch.

Mongoose brushes are excellent in cases when Hog brushes are too rough and Sable is not stiff enough to move thicker paint over the painting surface. Mongoose is priced between Sable and Hog.

You can choose either Sable brushes or Mongoose for your painting process, or you can have both.

Hog Brushes

Hog Brushes are less expensive than Mongoose brushes and has a completely different nature. This type of brush can be used for many purposes, but with limitations. They are perfect for Sketching.

These brushes are suitable for Impasto – brush marks, in the paint, make artwork more vivid. You need to superimpose paint with the brushes carefully, otherwise it’s easy to “plow up” newly applied lower paint.

Stiff and hard Hog Brushes are especially created for such techniques as Scumbling and Drybrush. They are just irreplaceable for the task.

Bristles of the brush wear out relatively fast, especially when used vigorously, and leave small particles of bristles on the surface of the painting. That’s perfectly fine while painting, but for Varnishing it’s better to choose a safe option, like a Synthetic brush.

Bristle brushes are multi-tasking, you can even glaze with them; but test them in glazes yourself. Not everyone will be satisfied with using such a rigid brush during glazing.

When choosing a Hog Brush, be sure that the bristles have natural split-ends. If brushes are suspiciously cheap, they are usually trimmed and are usually only suitable for sketching or unimportant works.

This is how cheap, cropped Hog brushes look and here you see a completely different quality. When it comes to brushes with natural split-ends, they are shaped perfectly.

You can reuse old brushes by trimming them and giving them the desired shape. Such reused brushes can be used for the purpose of Scumbling. Such brushes are even better than new brushes with long bristles.

For priming with Gesso – employ broad bristle brushes, rich in hair, and make sure they are flat-shaped like those used for wall painting; the wider and thicker the brush is, the smoother the Gesso is applied and distributed over a canvas.

Synthetic Brushes

Synthetic Brushes are on the same level as Sable and Mongoose brushes when used in glazing technique. They are equally soft and flexible, however whatever one may say, synthetic is synthetic and you will sense a non-natural feeling during your work, especially if you are used to natural Sable and Mongoose brushes.

What may impress you is the price, which is tangibly lower than the price of Sable and Mongoose.

Medium sized, flat, synthetic brushes are ideal for final Varnishing – neat flexible hairs help spread the varnish evenly on the painting surface. Buy a few Synthetic Brushes, especially for Varnishing, and stick a label to make them distinct from others and keep them exclusively for Varnishing purposes. Varnishing brushes shouldn’t contain oil paint particles.

Synthetic brushes can be used as disposable brushes, for any dirty work, numerous sketches, and for covering a canvas with fast and expressive brush movements. Underpainting can be done with these brushes, the upper layers of a painting can be continued by using other brush types.

Art Brushes For Oil Painting

Art Lesson 6, Part 2

Find out all you need to know about Oil Painting Brushes

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Oil Painting Brushes for Beginners

Well, let’s recap. Which brushes are better and should be chosen?

For some artists, Sable brushes might feel too soft, so they stick to rigid Hog Bristles. Others, on contrary, like to paint with soft accurate movements, smoothing the paint on the surface – for them Sable brushes are the best choice. With time, you will feel the difference between different kinds of brushes and form your own personal preferences.

But for now I advise you to acquire the following starter set of brushes:

Sable: for glazing
Shapes: Round and/or Flat and/or Filbert
Size: 00, 4, 8, 12
Bear in mind that sizes could vary from brand to brand; number 8 of one brand could be a completely different size in another brand.

Mongoose: can duplicate the Sable brush set. They are more or less interchangeable.

Hog: rigid irreplaceable brushes for all kinds of works.
Size: 00, 4, 8, 12
And also these are priming brushes – which should be used exclusively for priming. Label them and keep them apart from painting brushes.

Synthetic: are soft brushes, they work as a cheaper alternative to Sable and Mongoose.
Size: 00, 4, 8, 12

Buy and keep your Varnishing brushes separate from the ones that you use to paint. For Varnishing, you need a Flat or Long Flat wide synthetic brush like these ones. You can even go for a wider brush like this one.

The logic behind choosing sizes is simple – you need the smallest possible brush for details; the biggest brush to work freely, blocking in large spaces on medium size canvas; and one or two sizes between the smallest and biggest brush.

Do not buy too many brushes under emotion; wait till you decide what brushes are better for you. You will naturally start collecting one brush after another, according to your preferences.

I have, at my disposal, a bunch of outstanding quality brushes I usually use for glazing, for finishing layers of painting; for flash and portraits.

I mostly use Mongoose brushes; Sables are too soft for my touch. These are my Bristle Brushes which I generally use for Underpainting and in methods that require the intensive work of a rigid brush – for Scumbling and Dry-Brush methods. Soft hair brushes cannot handle these methods. And finally, Synthetic brushes. I like to keep my best and favourite brushes for important work and I choose Synthetic for all unimportant odd jobs and exercises. They are disposable and, as you see, I have quite a lot of them. But honestly, no one needs so many brushes, they just sit in boxes for years.

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How to clean your Brushes

If you paint on an everyday basis, there is no need to clean the brushes after each painting session. It’s enough to gently wipe off any excess paint from the brush with a piece of cloth; clean it in Linseed Oil until there’s no trace of any paint coming out; and immerse it into Linseed or Sunflower Oil till the next session. Brushes should lay in Oil, flat in a horizontal position, to avoid damaging brush bristles. Never store your brushes vertically in Oil or in any solvent. Before your next painting session, just wipe off the oil from the brush and it’s ready to be used.

When your brushes have been set aside for a long time, you should clean them properly. To do so, you can use Solvents or hand soap, but there are downsides to using them – solvents make Brush hair brittle, but soap can’t wash out the paint from the brush hair, and paint can gradually build-up in the ferrule, which can misshapen the Brush quite soon.

However, there is a special cleaner that can cope with such problems. I’ve been using it for the last two years and must admit it has a big advantage over solvents and soap. It is “The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver”. It completely removes not only fresh, but also hardened oil paint from the brush. From any brush – whether it is the finest Sable brush or Hog bristle brush, or synthetic brush. This cleaner helps prevent paint build-up in the ferrule and substantially extends the life of your brushes. It’s very simple to use: after you remove excess paint from the brush, wet it with water; swirl it in the cleaner and work it into a lather, then rinse the brush with clean water and repeat the process until the lather becomes white. Gently shape the brush head with your fingers and leave them to dry horizontally. When your brushes are dry, you can store them vertically, head-side-up.