#artists materials

[msmarymillspaulos]

Painting materials

Fairfield Porter (1907-1975)

American Artist

[brokeforart]

Review: The Bianyo Collection Synthetic Brushes for watercolours

Hello!  Long time no see. I hope to update here often, since I have been doing a lot of material exploration over the last few years.  Today I want to talk about some very affordable brushes that I recently discovered. Have a read below! 

I had recently gone to Bhaskar Art Supplies in Chitrakala Parishad, Bangalore and I initially went to get some colored pencils and ended up buying two new materials. Both are wonderful and I first want to talk about these paintbrushes since I absolutely love them!

They are these super long handle brushes by the brand Bianyo. Now I have seen this brand selling fairly inexpensive and sometimes cheap looking materials on Amazon.in. I’ve always been a little sceptical with these Chinese-make art supplies but I have noticed that there are a huge number of Chinese-origin watercolour brushes from Aliexpress doing the rounds on Instagram. A lot of water-colourists (especially the accounts of artists from Russia and other parts of Europe) have been raving about Chinese-made brushes that are sold under various brands on Aliexpress.

Now I initially eyed a nice set of brushes hanging in the display at Bhaskars and when I asked the sales girl to show me those brushes, she asked me to check these out instead. She said they were a big hit with the water-colourists and that it was a great deal on the number of brushes you get.

So in a pack you get 13 brushes. Yes 13. No, none are missing, they actually are a set of 13. This set comprises of sizes: 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 0. I wouldn’t compare the sizes to traditional sizes as I find that the size zero isn’t as thin as traditional size zeros. Its more like a traditional size 2.

These brushes have super long handles. The package says that they are for acrylic, oil and watercolour paints. I can only imagine they brushes would be best suited for watercolour painting. 

The bristles are super plump, soft and holds a lot of water. Usually, long handle brushes are used for canvas/board painting so you don’t have to sit too close to the canvas/or have to peer in to paint. They also are preferred when laying down a sketch on canvas so you have some looseness with your strokes since you are meant to paint from a distance. I found that these paint brushes are wonderful for watercolours and the handles are excessively long for the job but I realised that it does add a nice weight to your strokes when you paint. I wouldn’t recommend these brushes for acrylic or oil painting simply because the bristles are too soft and would wear out too soon.

A good tip to keep in mind is that when you are shopping for brushes always buy the ones with the plastic tips on, and make sure you keep them safe and never lose them! These are the most important parts to keeping your bristles nice and sharp!

Now onto the brush. The brushes come with the bristles all glued together (as usual). They do this with a gum arabic or similar solution, which washes off when the new brush is cleaned in water. Once they are free of this binder, they are super soft to the touch, the tips are nice and sharp and no stray hairs in sight! The bigger brushes seem to be bigger in fatness rather than in length which is what I prefer. The bigger brushes can hold huge amounts of paint, but I fear the thick handles might make them a little cumbersome to use too often. The finer brushes are superb for detailing. Keep in mind that these are ideal ‘studio’ brushes. Their handles are so ridiculously long that they cannot be easily carried on an outing. Crafty artists out there might want to consider sawing off the handles :D. The handle itself feels nice and solid and has a beautiful wood finish which shocked me since almost all cheap brushes have a coat of thick opaque paint in some boring color. 

The brushes have a nice spring when painted with and honestly are amazing to work with.

These 3 brushes were used for a bunch of paintings that I worked on last night and they have still managed to keep their shape! 

Below are some GIFS of the brushes in use: have a look at how nice are they are to paint with )

This set of 13 brushes retails at Rs.950/- at Bhaskar Art Supplies in Chitrakala Parishad. I have also found them here on Snapdeal but they seem to be out of stock at the moment. 

[lloyddavis]

Make Something Every Day - Writing 002

Today I rebelled. Slightly. Or perhaps I just tweaked the rules based on learning what works. I’ve been thinking for a couple of days that Sunday needs to be a review day rather than a full “production” day. Writing And then I pulled “Writing” again. The first repeat. And while I have done some writing and thinking about writing today (and I’m writing this) I gave myself permission to do some…

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[yukkicross]

[archivesofamericanart]

Greetings from the easel-side table of Frederick Hammersley! Our National Collector Jason Stieber recently visited Hammersley’s studio in Albuquerque to check out an addition we are receiving to the artist’s papers (a complement to the 29.6 linear feet of materials we currently hold) and snapped this shot of Hammersley’s paints with color reference cards.

[richpowell]

Art Materials Rundown

Due to the recent post about cleaning nibs, I’ve gotten a bunch of questions from folks about the art materials I work with. It Just so happens that the wonderful David Paccia interviewed me in April of 2014 and covered just about EVERYTHING. Check out his excellent blog and learn a LOT about a LOT of artists!

DAVID WASTING PAPER

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[the-smutpeddler]

Tools of the trade!

You sometimes see a lot of artists and illustrators talk about the various materials and items they use to create their work, so I thought i’d give a look into my kit. I think it’s always cool to see what people use; it gives me a chance to try and experiment with different techniques or brands of art supplies.

Photo 1: That’s pretty much the contents of my day to day pencil case that I carry around everywhere with me. I always sketch with mechanical pencils, the precision is far better I find. I use micron pens when i’m outlining or inking really fine details. The Pilot V Sign Pen is amazing for large areas of black as the ink flows really nicely and dries quickly too. I have a couple biros for note taking (including the giant Hello Kitty one), a Derwent Graphik pen for outlines also (it’s a water based pigment pen), and a silver paint pen for fancy things!

Photo 2: Marker pens in various flesh tones/pinks. I got these from Hobbycraft for £5 a pack (i think). They’re by First Edition Craft and are pretty much bargain Copics. The two pens on the side are glitter pens and SO SO PRETTY! They’re made by ZIG and are primarily used for those shimmery details you’d see on handmade greetings cards but they’re so good for subtle shiny details on drawings.

Photo 3: The only coloured pencils that I have always sworn by I bought from WHSmith. They’re dirt cheap but the colours are really nice and super blendable.

Photo 4: PAINTS! I’ve had this Winsor & Newton set for about 3 years now...you can see which colours I use most! I really like the quality of these paints, and where a set this size isn’t exactly cheap (a set this size is about £65) they are a good investment if you’re serious about watercolour painting. I don’t have a preference of paint brushes..I tend to go for fairly small ones that are easy to use for small details and I buy some whenever there’s a deal at the art store. I now and again use inks and acrylics, but it’s a rarity these days!

Photo 5: MY BABY! I started getting serious about digital art last year and bought myself this graphics tablet. It was fairly inexpensive on Amazon and it’s compact for those that don’t have a great deal of space to work in. It’s a Wacom Intuous and goes for about £60

[indigoelevendesign]

Goodies!!!! My big sister got these for me from Curry's Artists' Materials in Canada, how awesome is she?! I'm really looking forward to trying these out soon.