Specialty Watercolor Brush Demo: Blooms, Cat Tongue, Filbert Grainer and Fan
I’m a traditionalist. When it comes to paint supplies, I don’t venture out too often past my typical “go to” brushes. That said, it is fun to experiment and at times, there are good reasons to have some specialty brushes in your arsenal of supplies.
In today’s blog post and video, I’m going to demonstrate four different brushes that you can purchase for different effects: the Blooms Brush, the Fan Brush, the Filbert Grainer and the Cat Tongue.
Here’s a run down of what each are good for:
The Blooms Brush: As the name implies, the Blooms Brush is good for creating blooms…loose florals especially. Not being a botanical watercolor artist, it isn’t a specialty of mine, but I can see how it would be a useful brush for anyone wanting to create loose florals. It is like an oversized Filbert brush with a flat profile and a rounded edge.
The Fan Brush: The Fan Brush allows you to create lots of “strands” or lines at once. It is great for painting fur and grasses. The one thing, however, that I don’t like about it, is that it can appear to create rather repetitive textures.
The Filbert Grainer: The Filbert Grainer is one of my favorites of the 4. It is essentially a Filbert Brush with a Fan edge…so you are able to get both a full brush stroke, as well as a fan stroke. This, too, is good for grasses and fur.
The Cat’s Tongue: I use a version of the Cat’s Tongue Brush that is called the Cosmotop Spin by DaVinci. It is also great for creating florals, however, the tip is pointed so you’ll be able to get some finer edges with this brush.
Watch the video to see how each performs on paper:
Which of these brushes do you think you’re most likely to try?