Brushes » Brushes by Use » School Brushes

School brushes are young artist's favorite painting tool and their smooth tips are excellent for coloring & drawing. Excellent quality high school brush are used for ceramic and basic school art classes. Available in several shapes and sizes, the brush is mostly made up of the wooden handle, ferrule, the metal band into which the bristles are inserted fastening them to the handle and the bristles, either natural or synthetic hairs or a combination of the two. The various school brushes are:

Flat Brush: The flat brush has many uses, from base coating large areas with a single color, side loading for highlights and shadows, and double loading for beautiful stroke work.

Angle Brush: The angle brush serves many purposes from getting into tight corners with the narrow tip, side loading to achieve soft floats to creating lovely stroke work roses and leaves

Filbert: The filbert is a flat with rounded corners. The brush design makes it a good choice for base coating in tight places. It is also used for some basic stokes and is especially nice to use for making leaves and petals.

Round Brush: The round brush is ideal for stroke work because its long, full bristles hold enough paint to enable the painting of flowing lines.

Liner/Script: The liner brush's long thin bristles are crafted for carrying a large amount of paint to create flowing lines, vines, scrolls, and a variety of borders, etc. The liner should always be used with paint thinned to an ink-like consistency, and is also fully to the ferrule.

Rake (Comb) : A rake is in essence composed of several liner brushes all held together within a flat ferrule. It should be treated like a liner, loaded with thinned paint and is used for grass, fur, beards, etc.

Mop: The mop brush is a round brush with a large, full bristle resembling a blush brush. It is used to soften and blend wet colors, generally floated areas or for softening the blending of the wet-in-wet technique.

Deer foot : It can be used wet or dry depending on the desired effect to create a variety of texture effects such as grass, foliage, fur, etc.

Brushes used for acrylics have long handles that allow the artist to work at a distance from the canvas. Acrylic paints are more caustic than oils, so acrylic brushes are designed with synthetics and bristle. Acrylic brushes are usable in other mediums, particularly oils, while brushes designed specifically for oil painting and watercolors are unsuitable for acrylics. Artists can very effectively use glazing and layering techniques when using acrylic brushes.

Both natural and synthetic bristles can be used with acrylics, depending on the artist's preference. But, acrylics, being alkaline in nature, can be hard on natural hair brushes. Those made with high quality synthetics have excellent durability and offers excellent stiffness, snap and hair shape retention for maximum control. The brushes must be kept clean. If acrylic paint dries in a brush it is very hard to get out without using strong solvents that might damage the brush. Brushes are cleaned promptly by washing them with warm water and mild soap when finished painting.