Mink, Squirrel and Pig
This may sound like the beginnings of a fairy-tale but it’s a quick and easy way to think about brushes. Most traditional brushes are made from animal hair and the quality of the brush – its bounce and feel, is dependent on the quality of the hair used.
Mink hair makes ‘Sable’ brushes and pig hair makes ‘Hog’ brushes…
“A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.”
Charles Dudley Warner
Your choice of what to paint on can alter the working properties of the paint and give you a different painting experience but it needn’t be a mystery, if you follow a few simple rules.
1. Acrylics straight from the tube are the most flexible medium, so can be painted on anything – paper, canvas, cardboard, metal…literally anything.
2. Oils are more tricky, so have to be painted onto a properly prepared surface (see: The Trouble with Oil) I recommend a prepared canvas or prepared board.
3. Watercolours work best on paper, I recommend Cold Pressed paper (confusingly also referred to as NOT paper meaning ‘Not’ Hot Pressed). It’s ideal for less experienced painters as it’s more forgiving. (There is a huge range of Watercolour papers see: How to choose Watercolour Paper).
Same pigment, different binder.
In a nutshell, most paints are made by mixing dry paint pigment together with a wet binder.
The difference between the type of paints, for example, oil paint, acrylic paint or watercolour is simply due to the different type of binder used.
So the binder could be oil, acrylic polymer or even egg yolk and it’s this – that gives each paint its characteristics…
