There are two kinds of brushes used in oil painting-those made of bristle and those of red sable. These are made both round and flat, but artists as a rule prefer the flat brushes, which are much better to work with.
In selecting brushes for an outfit choose those of which the bristles are short rather than long. It is always well to have plenty of brushes, though for absolute necessity eight flat bristle brushes are enough to begin with. These should be of four different sizes, the largest measuring about an inch in width, and the smallest a quarter of an inch or less, and of each kind there must be two.
The sables, of which the flat pointed ones arc the most useful, are much more expensive than the bristle brushes, costing from 25 cents upward, where the others are on an average io cents each. Three of them, therefore, Nos. 5. 8 and i i, will be sufficient at first, and either the French or English sables are good.
The blender is the name of a large, soft hair brush which used to be employed by some painters for smoothing off surfaces, blending skies, backgrounds, etc. This is not at all used by modern artists, who do not approve of "blending" beyond a certain amount of softening and dragging the edges of tones, which can be done with a clean, soft bristle or sable brush.
No comments:
Post a Comment