SIZE

Size does matter most when choosing a brush. If you have a brush too small there can be too many brushstrokes in describing the object, the scene, or the background, which can become distracting. On the other hand, a brush too big won’t give you the details you want.

In general, use as big of a brush as you can to begin your painting, and continue to use it until you start losing more than you gain. Then reduce the size of the brush you’re using incrementally. For instance if you start with a 2 inch brush, move to a 1 inch brush, then into the numbered brushes. Just about any brush under an inch is numbered. By numbered brushes I mean the standard brushes from an art supply store. The larger the number, the bigger the brush, and vice versa. However, different brands use a different numbering system. A 12 inch Grumbacher brush may or may not be the same size as a Princeton 12 or an Escoda 12, so get used to judging size by eye.

The first and foremost job of any brush is to hold paint and release that paint onto your painting. Pretty much all brushes lose their shape eventually, so while a new flat will give you a clean, straight line, after a couple years it will become frayed with bristles sticking out all over the place, making it impossible to get the same kind of mark you get with a new brush. Those brushes can still be useful, as either for blocking in, mixing colors, backgrounds etc when you don’t need a clean edge. Depending on your style of painting those brushes can be used for an entire painting, leaving details for the viewer to fill in or the details can simply be absent.

Next post: Shapes of brushes