The Best Watercolor Brushes

Choosing the right watercolor brush isn't easy at all. Artists looking for paint brushes are often faced with a very rich offer. In fact, as painter Shaye Hirsch indicates, there are long and short brushes, round or flat, with natural or synthetic hair, from the brands Tintoretto, Princeton, Winsor & Newton, Da Vinci, Borciani Bonazzi and so on.

To help painters, Hirsch will talk about the dimensions, shapes, materials, brands and costs of the various watercolor brushes.

Let's start with a quick and superficial observation of watercolor brushes. Hirsch indicates that, generally, the best watercolor brushes usually come with a short handle, or at least not excessively long, the latter being reserved for the proper easel techniques, such as oil paints and acrylics.

The typical shape of the brush for watercolor is the round one with a circular bristle section. Specifically, the bristles should have a flame arrangement, with a wide base that gradually tapers, to end with a thin tip. Only the best watercolor brushes have this quality, with the aim to allow you to use the brush to draw fine lines. Even in the world of watercolors, there are flat, fan-shaped, cat's tongue brushes and so on.

Hirsch, who uses the watercolor technique for creating his artworks, notes that, in recent times, traditional models have returned to make room among normal watercolor brushes. These are brushes with short and thick handles, which are rather squat, aimed to reproduce the unique characteristics of brushes of the past. In short, by painting with these brushes, it is possible to imitate the Renaissance masters.

 

Choose the watercolor brush: the material

“What makes the difference, in the case of paint brushes, is obviously also the material chosen for their bristles,” says Shaye Hirsch. “In fact, the materials used for this purpose are the most diverse. In fact, we cam speak of ox hair, marten hair, squirrel hair, pig bristles, goat hair, synthetic hair and so on”.

Here, Shaye Hirsch shares the main materials used to make the best watercolor brushes:

·        Kolinsky sable brushes

·        Red sable brushes

·        Squirrel hair brushes

·        Ox hair brushes

·        Synthetic brushes

 

The best brushes for watercolor: Shaye Hirsch’s selection

In this paragraph, talented painter Shaye Hirsch has chosen those brushes that he believes are an excellent choice for all watercolor painters:

·        Tintoretto round tip watercolor brush

·        Da Vinci round tip watercolor brush

·        Cotman Winsor & Newton watercolor brush

·        Princeton Neptune Bombasino brush

·        Traditional Aquasoft Tintoretto brush

·        Casaneo Da Vinci watercolor brush

·        Winsor & Newton Series 7 watercolor brush

·        Tradition brush with metal tip Da Vinci

Now that you know how to choose your watercolor brush, you can start creating your artworks without any further hesitating.