Paint Brushes

Brushes for miniature painting come in a myriad of sizes ranging from 1" to 20/0 or more and are made from a variety of materials including red sable, fox, camel hair (i.e., squirrel tail), ox hair, and nylon. As a general rule of thumb, the more "0's" the smaller the brush tip, although sizes may vary by company so visual comparison is important. A experienced miniature painter will usually have at least four round brushes available for use. A large round brush is used for priming and blocking in color in large areas. A medium detail round brush (e.g. 000, 5/0) is used for smaller areas. A fine detail round brush (e.g., 10/0, 20/0) is used to paint belts, buckles, eyes, moustaches, etc. Finally, a beat-up old brush (typically medium-sized and round) is useful for the dry-brushing technique.

To this basic arsenal, you can add a variety of specialized brushes:

• Cat's Tongue - A flat brush with rounded tip well adapted for dry-brushing techniques. No, it's not really a cat's tongue.

• Flat - Flat brush with a thin edge. Good for drybrushing and for filling in large areas. Holds less paint than a Cat's Tounge brush

• Chisel Point - A flat brush cut at an angle. Perfect for areas that a regular flat brush is too big for. A chisel point provides more control when detailing than a Cat's Tongue.

You may also want to have several of each brush size/type so that you can trade off a wet brush for a dry brush during your painting project.

Good brushes are expensive (ranging in price from $2-8 and up to $20 or more depending on the material used and the quality of the brush). They are typically available at hobby and game shops but can often be found at arts and crafts stores slightly cheaper.

A good brush may only be good for a few dozen figures before it loses its point or may last for years depending on how well it is cared for. Because brushes are so expensive and subject to fairly rough use, it is important to take care in using, cleaning and storing your brushes to extend their useful lifetime. Here are some suggested "do's" and "don'ts".

• When painting, never leave your brush resting on its tip in a container of water or thinner. This will bend or fray the tip, particularly on fine detail brushes.

• Only dip the tip or point of your brush in the paint. It is better to reload your brush several times than to overload your brush. Not only do you have less control and risk putting too much paint on your miniature with an overloaded brush, but you also may have problems with paint drying in your brush bristles, especially under the metal ring that holds the bristled together.

• Never blot or squash paint onto a figure using a fine brush. The grinding motion will cause the bristles to bend and fray.

• Clean your brushes after each use. First lightly wipe your brush across a paper towel or blotter to remove excess paint. Then gently rotate your brush against the side of the solvent/water container or under a low stream of warm water until the bristles stop exuding paint. Failure to remove unused paint from the bristles leaves a residue, which gradually forces the bristles apart and makes it difficult to form a good point. If using acrylic paints, you can rinse and clean your brush in warm water and dish detergent. Oil-based paints require use of a thinner. Make sure that you use a thinner designed for use with your paint. There are also several brush-cleaning compounds on the market.

• After rinsing and/or cleaning your brush, reform the tip of the bristles into a point before reusing or storing the brush. You can do this with your fingers or with your tonque.

• If you are going to reuse the brush, make sure to change your rinse water or solvent if it becomes colored or cloudy and to rinse brushes used for metallic paints in a seperate rinse or solvent container.

• Store your brushes bristle up and/or use plastic tubes to protect the bristles.

• Don't delude yourself into thinking you can trim a brush back into shape with a razor or sissors. Trimming may be necessary to remove a stray bristle, but you can't trim a brush to form a new point the same way that you can sharpen a pencil into a new point. You'll just cause your brush bristles to fan out.

Once a brush has become worn and frayed, or is no longer able to hold a point, it is a good candidate for dry-brushing service. Depending on the nature of your dry-brushing task, you may also want to help the bristles fan out by trimming the brush tip. This will give you a wider, flatter service that is useful for dry-brushing larger areas.

Painter Feedback

Jonathan Lim: Some "tips" (pun intended):

• ALWAYS watch what happens to your brush. Just because you wear out one a week doesn't mean that it happens to everyone! Watch what happens, experiment with washing techniques. MOST IMPORTANT: IF SOMETHING'S NOT WORKING........... STOP DOING IT!! (or you'll waste more brushes)

• Keep your brushes as clean as is humanly possible. Any paint on the brush? CLEAN IT before it dries. Especially metallic paints, my God.

• Keep your brush tip as pointed as possible. Two minutes without fixing the tip can be the difference between life and death. Don't ever, ever crush, twist, scrape or screw up the tip. The brush will remember! If there is paint on the base of the hairs, don't try to scratch it out....wash it out! If it's gone dry, it's too late, baby.

• If your brush starts to lose its spring, kill it.

• Don't drybrush! (unless you use a cheap brush)

• If possible, use no metallic paints (unless you use a cheap brush)

• Sable. Only sable. No synthetics, no matter how Japanese or how expensive. Only sable hair.

• Never "accidentally" screw back a brush hair with the plastic tube. The brush will certainly remember that and commit suicide on you. Even worse, don't miss the tube altogether and split the whole brush head!

• Never use brushes smaller that 00. No need at all, and the small ones never work anyway. If the tip is at a point, there's no need for a tiny brush that will up and die quickly anyway.

• When cleaning brushes (which should be every 30 seconds), never scrape the tip along the cup bottom. Swirl the brush around quickly but firmly WITHOUT touching the bottom or sides of the vessel.

• If a brush is going dry with paint.....WASH IT FAST. Don't try to push the time limit, or you'll end up with a horrid brush. Similarly, if a brush is too wet, dry it out on a tissue. Or you'll end up with a blob.

• If you accidentally damage your brush's pointedness, FIX IT FAST. Swirl it in water and slick the hairs to a tip again.

A sable brush is to a wargamer what a katana is to a samurai: a holy object of perfection that must be respected. Or it will have its revenge.

Gamemeister: A good brush is worth the money and should be properly cared for to maintain it. Cheap bristled brushes will not last no matter what you do with them, the hair that they are comprised of just is not meant to last (on the creature it grew from, like the mane and tail of horses, asses, camels and other creatures with coarse brittle hair). On the other hand, a supple, flexible hair that can last through repeated wettings does not occur by accident, it has however evolved naturally on certain 'oily furred' creatures such as the mink, sable, ermine, etc. These brushes are a little expensive, but they will give you superior service and last much longer than a dozen cheaper brushes will (if you care for them properly). Care for them? Yeah, use a good brush soap like that made by Grumbacher (bar or liquid). It will condition the hair so that repeated wettings will not cause the hair to become brittle and dry over time. Try it, you'll like it.

I use two brands of brushes, both work well for their intended purpose. Grumbacher is a very fine brand, somewhat expensive, but you get what you pay for! Loew-Cornell is the other brush, very good, I also use their 'low-end' brushes for expendables. Here's the breakdown.

The best brush advise I ever heard "if you wouldn't give it to your girlie as a stole or wear it on your lapel, don't buy a brush made of it." Political Correctness be damned here, the point is, if it isn't a mink, sable or similarly fine fur, the brush is not worth buying. Examples of bad brush composition: horse, camel, etc. (yes, they make these types of brush too).

The next most important fact about animal hair brushes, they are like the hair on your head!. If you let it dry out, it will get brittle. If you wetted your own hair about 100 times over a four hour period and left it to dry in the air you'd expect to find some damage to the hair. It would be dry, possibly split or break in places. This is why your brushes loose their shape. You need to use a BRUSH SOAP. This soap is formulated for natural fibre brushes which includes a CONDITIONER to keep the hair soft, supple and intact! Grumbacher makes the best brush soaps I've found.

Steve Miller: My wife paints porcelain and has "allowed" me to use some of her Scharff Brushes. These are cat's tongue brushes so you can kill two birds (pun intended) with one stroke. They are pointed on the end for details and flat in the body area for drybrushing. I'll post the address if you want to pay for a superb brush that holds up to lead (damn...pewter) figure edges. IMHO, brushes are like tools...you can buy cheap tools and end up pitching them or buy a decent tool like Craftsman, Snap Lok, etc. and keep them for life. I still have a collection of Scharf brushes I've used for 3 years now and they're still going strong. They are more expensive than the cheap stuff but well worth the purchase.

Stan Olson: I am shocked at the price of art brushes in an art store, but some of the craft sections in regular stores (like Walmart) have good enough brushes . The Brush should not be stiff, and should keep its bristles. Always inspect as you paint a figure and be ready with tweezers to yank a bristle bit from the acrylic paint.

I give a brush a trim if necessary using use good needle point scissors ... Dont use a brush thats so small that the paint drys (on it) too quickly, and leaves paint lumps ... I dont use mustache wax on my brushes though ...

Jay Adan: You really DO get what you pay for with brushes. I ALWAYS buy Windsor Newton Series 7 brushes when I am picking up detail brushes. I'll go cheaper when I'm looking for brushes to drybrush with but when I want to make sure that the pupils of my figures eyes come out just right I reach for that $17-22 brush.

Michael Falcon-Gates: I've been using Loew-Cornell's "Golden Taklon" range for a couple of years, painting with acrylics. They stay pointy longer than anything else I've tried.

One thing about them: they do acquire a hook-shaped tip after some use. This seems to be a problem with all types of artificial-fiber brushes, and the "hook" on the end of the L-C brushes is much smaller than on other brands. (The corresponding problem for sables seems to be that they stop being pointy faster, which isn't so bad for your "area" brushes but doesn't help with detail work.)

David Sullivan: I go through brushes like Q-Tips. It tends to be common in the hobby. The larger ones last for a while because the application is less precise. The fine tipped ones go the way of the dodo after about 30 figures or so. I use Robert Simmons 15/0 and 10/0. They last longer than others I've used and they have a nice tiny tip, perfect for painting eyeballs and such.

You can try washing the brushes with a solvent or even soap -- assuming you use acrylic. I find this has some beneficial effect, however, I consider brushes doomed from the start and buy them in twos and threes just to make sure I have a "reload" on hand when the one I'm working with goes.

Brian Hodson: I use acrylics and clean my brushes in water. When cleaning the brush, I "load" it with water, then place the bristles on a flat surface (not too absorbent, so that the excess water forms a droplet) and gently roll the brush in the water to loosen paint from the bristles. While removing the paint, I'm pretty rough on the bristles, sometimes even pressing them and spreading them to remove flakes. After the paint is removed, I continue to roll the brush in the water, laying it nearly flat (parallel to the cleaning surface) and twisting the bristles to a point, slowly lifting the brush until the tip is "re-trained". Doesn't take as long as it sounds.

In the end, your brush will turn into a minature broom and you'll have to re-assign it to the dry-brush brigade. I have, however found that by "training" the tip as described I've managed to get three to five times the life from my brushes.

Ray Rangel: Cleaning brushes properly is the key to lengthening the life of any brush. Bristles tend to spread because of minute particles of paint become adhered to them. Dragging the brush across a cake of "The Master's Brush Cleaner and Preserver" repeatedly will remove these particles. Do this at the end of each painting session and you will eliminate most of your problems. We have all forgotten to do the end of session cleaning only to find a stiff brush sitting on the table when we return to continue. This soap will do an excellent job of removing that old paint. You can actually see the paint coming off the bristles as you stoke the cake with the brush. Once clean, shape the brush by pulling it through your finger to which a little moisturizing dish soap has been applied. Just a little! Remember that brushes are made of hair and like the hair on your head, it is subject to drying out and becoming brittle. Like the hair on your head, the bristles can be trained into shape by shaping the point before storing the brush.

Jeff Ewing: Paint globs up under the little metal ring that holds the bristles to the handle, spreading the bristles out from the base to the tip, yielding the broom-like shape. Try not to get any paint on the brush near the handle (tough on 10/0s, I know.) Once you've got this problem, it can be allieviated somewhat by soaking the brush in rubbing alcohol overnight and then washing them thoroughly.

Andy O'Neill: Tips on cleaning and storing paint brushes:

• Avoid getting paint into the ferrule or paint drying on the bristles.
• Wash out thoroughly in turps.
• Wash in warm water and detergent - not too hot or you'll stuff the bristles and or the glue holds them in the ferrule.

Assuming natural bristle: after cleaning, dip in a little watered fabric conditioner, form a point, and store upright in a jam jar or similar ( bristles up, obviously).

You can sometimes fix brushes where the tips are split, so long as it's not because they're matted with paint. Dip in fabric conditioner as above. Form a point - roll the bristles against a surface if necessary. Wrap a bit of newspaper around the tip and ferrule and cellotape around to hold it. Leave overnight.

If you plan on leaving the brushes for a while, vaseline the bristles lightly. Wash in mild detergent before you next use.

| Top of Page | Painting | Tips & Guides | DBA Resources |

Last Updated: December 9, 2003

Questions, comments, suggestions welcome.
Send them to Chris Brantley, brant@erols.com.