Winsor Newton Artisan Brushes

There is one main benchmark for brushes that are used with thick or viscous colour; the thicker the colour, the stiffer the brush needs to be. A heavy paint like oil requires a brush with enough resilience to manipulate the colour with complete control.
However, a colour that has been thinned will need softer tuft (e.g. soft hair or filament) and a colour that has been thinned to a fluid consistency needs a brush with flow control (e.g. synthetic or natural hair brush such as sable).

Therefore brush characteristics to consider are:

• Firmness of bristle û Is the bristle capable of moving heavy-bodied color over the surface with authority?

• Tip control û Does the bristle or hair allow for subtlety in blending? Does it give fine control when creating detail?

Oil color brushes are generally made from two different types of hair, Hog and Synthetic hair.

Hog
Properly dressed, the finest quality hog brushes offer superior firmness and flagged ends for control and blending. Hog bristle is good for use with thick color. The hair is extremely resilient and the most important characteristic is that it is æflaggedÆ or split at the end.

These flags carry more color on the brush and apply it evenly on the surface. The very best hog brushes have over 80% flagged hairs. We offer three types of hog hair brushes (ArtistsÆ Hog, Winton and Azanta) and one synthetic brush which resembles the properties of Hog (Artisan).

Sable
The second choice for oil color painters is a sable brush. These are used when the painter needs more control of color when it has been thinned down with solvents. The high quality hair gives the brush excellent shape retention and allows the artists to paint intricate detail. This makes it the ideal complement to a Hog brush in an oil painter's studio.

Synthetic
High quality synthetic fibers are especially good if the brushes come into contact with water. As with our Artisan Water Mixable Oil Colors, where the brushes can be cleaned with water it is important that the brushes remain strong and durable and appropriate for painting with thick bodied color straight from the tube.

Sometimes when oil color has been thinned it is necessary to have a softer tuft. This is where synthetic fibers also work well. For example with the Synthetic Mongoose hair used in our Monarch brushes, providing a balance between the stiffness of hog and the softness of sable.