This has been Arlene's #1 brush for over 10 years!
She does her linework, washes, strokes and dots all with this single brush.
This brush retails for $34.50
Cleaning Instructions: In the ten years I have been using a Kolinsky Sable brush, cool water has been the only cleaner used. I hold the brush under cool running water and use the fleshy part of my thumb to work the paint from the ferrule. My brushes never have paint ‘stuck’ in the bristles.
Why doesn’t it permanently adhere to the bristles? The bristles are made of natural hair and synthetic paint cannot create a bond as it can to synthetic brushes.
Loading This Brush for Linework and Crosshatching:
All my linework is painted with this Scharff Kolinsky Sable Round (#4). Athena’s Gray Palette Paper is a must when painting with the white or cream color paints used for lacework. It allows you to see the transparency or opaqueness of the paint when mixing washes or loading the brush for linework.
Carry a couple of brushloads of water to your palette away from the paint. Using your brush to mix, add small amounts of paint to the water until the mix is the consistency of heavy cream. When at the correct consistency, the mixture will flow from the fully loaded brush through the fine hair at the tip without having to apply pressure to the bristles.
To load the brush, flatten the bristles in the puddle of mixed paint and water. When you lift the brush it will have what I call a “full, fat-belly.” At this point there is too much moisture in the brush to paint the necessary fine lines. To extract some of the moisture, hold the brush as you would a pencil and lay it unto a clean area of your palette. Roll the brush counter-clockwise while pulling it up to the brush tip. You should have extracted some of the moisture from the brush as well as having brought the hairs to a nice fine point. Depending on the initial amount of moisture in the brush, this step may need repeating.
Hold the brush upright for all linework. If the paint puddles at the end of the line, there is too much water in the brush. If the paint skips while painting the line, there is not enough water in the brush. If you have to put pressure on the bristles, there is not enough moisture. This brush carries a lot of paint, allowing you to paint many fine lines without having to reload the brush. When properly loaded, you can cover an 8-1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper with lines! Test your loaded brush on a dark piece of paper to check consistency.
