Best Watercolor Brushes of 2022

 Industrial Watercolor Brushes Gordon Brush Mfg. Co., Inc. Offers

To get beautiful results when using watercolor as a medium, it is imperative to use the best watercolor brushes you can buy, as watercolor painting is delicate and unforgiving in nature.

Natural bristle watercolor brushes are soft and have a much better liquid-holding capacity than watercolor brushes made with synthetic hairs due to their fibrous anatomies, which excel at picking up and retaining water for lengths of time. Natural bristle watercolor brushes feel more like extensions of the artist's hand since they're more sensitive to shifts in pressure.

Gordon Brush® manufactures watercolor brushes in a variety of shapes, sizes, costs, and hair types. When purchasing most kinds of art supplies, watercolor paint brushes ultimately come down to personal preference and cost. The choice depends upon techniques you like to use and how the brushes feel in your hand.

Pure Red Sable round brushes are the most versatile and widely used brush for watercolor painting. A round brush comes to a fine point and its stroke is more organic. Their shape makes them ideal for small details, delicate lines and for broader strokes and washes. Brushes made for watercolor are specifically suited to deal with the fluidity and delicacy of watercolor paints and techniques.

A good watercolor brush should have the following characteristics: (1) it should not shed more than a couple of hairs; (2) it should balance well in the hand; (3) the handle should not feel too fat, (4) the brush should be durable; (5) the handle should not come loose at the ferrule; (6) there should be minimal warping or swelling of the wood over long periods of soaking; and (7) the brush must also have a quality called "snap", which allows the brush to respond and rebound quickly as the amount of downward pressure applied to it on the surface of the paper is varied.

Snap refers to the action of the damp brush hairs snapping upright after they are pulled down and sideways to the handle. This is most important, for this resiliency allows the artist to create a variety of paint widths within the same stroke of the brush, sometimes referred to as "action". A brush with no snap bends and does not rebound at all. This is not a good watercolor brush to use because it has no action.

Gordon Brush® manufactures three beautiful series of watercolor brushes:

0430-Series (Pure Red Sable Round Pointer Watercolor Brushes) 

These brushes are made with a short black lacquered handle with a nickel-plated ferrule. This series is ideal for one stroke painting as well as many other techniques. 

0611-Series (Pure Red Sable Flat Watercolor Brushes) 

This series of brushes will retain its body when wet, which is the true test of a sable brush. The seamless nickel-plated ferrule and lacquered handle, make these brushes a great value. A flat brush is more angular, and the stroke appears straighter.

6146-Series (Pure Red Sable Scripto Liner Watercolor Brushes) 

These watercolor brushes are made with a black lacquered handle and a seamless nickel-plated ferrule. The extra-long liner is designed to hold a lot of paint so you can make thin lines longer.

So, if you want to be a famous watercolor artist like Winslow Homer (an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art); Georgia O'Keeffe (an American modernist artist known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of American modernism"); Andrew Wyeth (an American visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century); or even Vincent van Gough (a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history), you must purchase your watercolor brushes from Gordon Brush®.

Call us today at 323-724-7777 or email us sales@gordonbrush.com for all your watercolor, industrial, janitorial, electronic, and custom brush needs.