Brushes - the bare minimum

Heh - what you want to do is take yourself off to the Amazon Kindle store, and buy yourself a copy of Oil Paint Basics, by a wonderful chap known - entirely coincidentally, naturally! - as Robert Jones. A mine, it is, a veritable mine, of useful information and a snip at whatever ludicrously low price they're now selling it for. I know I - whoops, he, I mean, he, put information about brushes in there. The thing could do with a revise, but how am I (damn! There I go again) how is HE, I mean, to go to all that trouble unless people buy it and offer the encouragement? Eh? I'm ... HE's, I mean! only human... Now then, recovering our essential dignity and adopting a solemn, not to say disinterested, posture... If we're talking oil paint, as indeed we are, I have old whisky-bottle tubes stuffed with brushes, some of them probably older than you; but that's because I've been at this for decades. I'd say you need just a basic set: Hog hair, preferably Chunking bristle, a couple of big short flats; a longer flat; a couple of filberts; a rigger - you can get these in hog-hair; a large round. If you do a lot of detail work, I should invest in a synthetic size 1, or 00, and keep it only for oil painting. One or two sables, for glazing, if you like - though these are hardly essential. And synthetic brushes are miles better than they used to be, especially if bought from Rosemary & Co, but there are other great brush-makers, which you can find on the major art suppliers' websites. You could switch to these entirely if you like - it'd be cheaper; but I like hogs. Whatever you do, don't buy cheapo-cheapo brushes - you can always tell, just by looking at them, if they're going to be any good, and price isn't necessarily that helpful: but if it looks like a load of rubbish, it probably is, and will shed hairs like an Afghan hound in full moult mode. If it's the basic minimum you're after, try just two of each: two flats, two rounds, two filberts, two riggers or even just one. Things like fan brushes are useful, but not essential at all. Size depends on how large you paint, at least in part - did I read that you like to paint at A5 size, or was that someone else? Sooner you than me, in passing - I'd have trouble seeing anything that small; and I'd obviously use smaller brushes if I did. But any painting from around 10" by 8" upwards, go for bigger brushes than you think you can handle; and if you're starting out, probably avoid brushes called 'Brights' - they've very useful once you've learned how to use them, but are so easily clogged with paint that they can equal instant mud in the hands of someone who doesn't know their limitations: they're very short flats - get one to play with when you've mastered the basic set; which is when you might also have a go at the fan brushes.

Good suggestion from Syd. I never used to use hogs with acrylics, but was short of a clean dry brush not so long ago and did something I never normally do, nor would recommend anyone else does, and snitched an oil painting brush (a hog) guiltily and used that. It worked well, as it happens, for the task I wanted it for. I might get a few hogs just for acrylic, although I prefer Syd's suggestion. Otherwise, there are good ranges for acrylic from Winsor and Newton, especially Sceptre Gold (really intended for watercolour, but good if you work in acrylic washes/glazes), and from Rosemary & Co's Shiraz and Golden ranges, plus probably a few more by now, they're continuously innovating. Don't use your best sables with acrylic, they'll be murdered horribly. Four of my favourite acrylic brushes date back a very long way, and are Rowney nylon - subtle they ain't, but if you want to push the paint about they're extremely useful. I think we probably get used to a favoured range of brushes in most media, but I've never had any issues with Rosemary's Shiraz range, which comes in a wonderful range of sizes (I really should be getting commission for these plugs...). And - lastly at last - acrylic really does benefit from a bit of macho posturing: possibly not your way..... but the rougher and more basic the hog, if you want to use one of those, the better.

I must count mine, some time - when I have an afternoon with nothing else to do. Using just four - although as it happens I agree with Marialena, those are the basics all right - would be like asking me to write a novel with a stub of bookmaker's pencil. Knives, of course, are a bargain by comparison - and you could get through a painting with just one, or at a generous pinch, two.

Old credit cards - fine; use them myself now and then, and Derek is brilliant with them. But then, I've used a pen-knife for this technique, or an oil painting knife - nothing is really new, is it? Finger nails, match-sticks, cocktail sticks, razor-blades .... people have used all of these things with watercolour, and all other media; plus brushes and a bit of water with pastel. Even old bits of twig out of the hedge. If you want to make marks, you'll find something to make them with. It's all good!

Some revolutionary souls even use brushes - dangerous radicals, if you ask me......

Sandra - no. Don't - there are all sorts of surfactants in oil that you don't want to mix with acrylics. Keep two sets of brushes and don't intermix them. Oil and water do not mix - and I'm not a bit keen on compromises here. People will, people do - but really - don't. Others may disagree with this, but - ignore them! Seriously - it's not good practice. Similarly, but less critically, keep your watercolour brushes separate from oil and acrylic too - you'll just destroy fine sables, although, perhaps oddly, oil paint is very slightly more forgiving with sables than acrylic. Even so - just don't take the risk. Keep your oil sables, if you use them, from your watercolour brushes; and do not use them with acrylics anyway, whatever you do.