Читать книгу Painting Expressive Watercolours - Mike Chaplin - Страница 8

There is no specific set of brushes that will suit every artist; brushes are designed to do a particular job, so you will collect a range that are able to make the marks you want.

The best-quality brushes are made of kolinsky sable. Each hair from this animal is thin at the base, broadens out and then comes to a fine point, so a kolinsky sable brush naturally makes a bellied shape that can come almost to a single-hair point. It makes an excellent drawing tool because it will hold a lot of water, allowing you to work without frequently dipping into the palette with all the potential changes of tone and colour that could cause.

For dry brushwork skimmed across the surface of the paper, a stiff brush is useful. These tend to be made of synthetic fibres and they have the disadvantage that, because each hair is very smooth, when you touch the paper the paint tends to flood out of the brush much more quickly than from a hair brush, which has a slightly roughened surface. However, if you like to scrub paint on to give texture, a synthetic brush is cheap and more expendable than a kolinsky sable. The alternative is a brush that is a mixture of synthetic and hair, which has some of the flexibility and water-holding capacity of a sable but will stand much more vigorous use.

Brushes made of other animal hair do not have the springiness of a sable, but used vertically for laying large washes they are ideal; even shaving brushes and housepainter’s brushes have their place, depending on the marks you wish to make.