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The Selection, Care And Handling Of Paint Brushes |
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By Ron Bell, #12907 |
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In most modeling articles, the modeler goes into great detail about his
airbrush settings, paint mixtures, paint booth construction and airbrush
cleaning techniques. But it's a pretty sure bet that somewhere on
that model, he or she used a paint brush to actually brush on paint.
Now, what paint you choose and how you apply it is subject for another
article. What you apply it with, called a brush, is what we are
talking about here. Paint brushes come in so many different sizes, styles and types that it's almost impossible to categorize them all. Many of them you should not consider. An example is a nylon bristle brush for acrylics. Most of these are far too stiff for our use. They will put down paint, but it will be streaky with huge brush stroke marks and the brushes will soon be stained and clogged with paint. What you should be looking for is sable or camel hair brushes. Look in your hobby, craft/art supply or even paint store. You can spend anywhere from under a dollar to over $10 a brush. As in all things regarding your hobby, you have to select the ones you are most comfortable with. If you're a beginner, you may not want to shell out top dollar. Maybe you just got off the Millionaire show or maybe you're cheap. Whatever. It's your choice. But stay with sable or camel's hair and try to avoid the "five-in-a-pack-got-'em-at-the-CVS-pharmacy-in-shrink-wrap" type that are meant to be used with your daughter's My Little Pony water colors. Those will literally fall apart after a few uses leaving hair in your paint job and you with a small stick with a metal tip to apply paint with. Brush sizes start in the 0000 or smaller range and run from there to 1, 2, 3, 4 and beyond with the higher numbers being larger brushes. What scale you model in or what types of models you build will determine what size or type brushes you need. If you build out of the box 1/8 scale tanks, you probably won't have much use for a 0000 brush. But if you do need one, you might think that the larger the brush, the higher the price. Not so, Rembrandt breath! Sometimes the 0000 brushes cost more. These are detail brushes. In these brushes you are paying for the point. They hold very little paint and they must put that paint in a very specific place. Without that point, they are useless. Good ones usually come with a cover for the point. Keep it and use it. As to large brushes, if you have an airbrush or use aerosol cans, you will do most of your large area painting that way, so you won't need too many larger brushes. But if you don't spray anything, buy the best large brushes you can. These will spread the paint evenly, leave fewer brush marks and won't shed hairs into your paint job. Shape wise, get a selection of flat and round brushes in small and medium. Larger brushes should probably be flat in shape. You'll soon identify your favorite brush for a given application. One special application is dry brushing. If you do a lot of this, invest in a good brush. For dry brushing you want a very dense (lots of hairs), soft brush. A stiff brush will leave streaks and a less dense brush won't hold enough paint to make dry brushing work. The size depends on what you are dry brushing. I have a 1/2" camel hair brush that's only 3/4" long. Its short, soft and dense and is perfect for dry brushing 1/35 scale military vehicles. For my 1/76 scale efforts, I departed from the usual brushes and purchased a small sable makeup brush. It's also dense, soft and short and in this case, small. It works great. Let's turn to the care and feeding of these brushes. When you get them home, except for the smaller detail brushes, its a good idea to brush them over your fingers a few times to flex them and get out any hairs that might be loose. You'll also find that some brushes come with a starch-like stiffener. This is meant to be protective during shipping and usually washes out with water although sometimes it takes mineral spirits or paint thinner. Do this before you use the brush. While using a brush, try to keep the paint from getting on the metal that holds the bristles. While it will clean off the metal easily, the paint will begin to accumulate at the base of the bristles and will be more difficult to completely clean and if not completely cleaned, after a while your brush will be stiff and won't hold much paint. After you've used a brush, you should clean it ASAP. Make sure you use the proper brush cleaner for the type of paint you are using. Don't use mineral spirits to clean acrylics and don't use water to clean oils. Most modelers usually have a small jar of cleaner (usually dirty and black) on their work surface that they clean brushes with. While it will last a long time for cleaning, it doesn't last forever. Change it every so often to make sure your brushes stay clean. Never clean brushes used for metallic paints in the cleaner you use for other colors. The metal flakes will get into every brush you clean afterwards. Its a good idea to have a separate bottle of cleaner to do metallics. After a brush has been cleaned with this, do it again in the "clean" cleaner. For water base paints there a numerous specialized brush cleaners. Most work better than just water. They have agents in them that keep the bristles in the brush from drying out and they have their advantages, but they are expensive and usually water or alcohol works just fine. Again it's your choice. For oil based paints, mineral spirits usually work fine and it smells better than turpentine. Lacquers don't brush well (As a matter of fact, they attack styrene), so you probably won't be using them much, but it you do, only lacquer thinner will clean your brush but be careful. It's highly flammable and has potent fumes. How do you actually clean a brush? Well, I start by first wiping all the excess paint I can off the brush back into the paint container. Then I take a doubled up paper towel and wipe as much paint out of the brush as I can. (Don't go crazy here. You'll pull the bristles out!) Then I dip it into the cleaning fluid and twirl it against the side of the jar to separate the hairs and get the solution all through the brush. Don't scrub it on the bottom. You'll break the bristles and cause the brush to fray and friz, never mind you'll be rubbing it into all that "goo" on the bottom. When you have all the paint out, wipe the excess cleaner off with a paper towel. Let's assume some super model came over and interrupted your painting session and you didn't clean your brush out. Next day it's stiff as a board. Lost cause? Maybe not. Try soaking it (it may take a day or two) in lacquer thinner whether it's water based paint or not. Slowly flex the brush until the bristles start to separate, clean it as usual in the lacquer thinner and then clean it in the cleaner appropriate for the type of paint that was on it, water or cleaner for water based or thinner for oils. While you can probably kiss that 0000 point goodbye, you may be able to save your larger brushes. Now when you're all done cleaning your brush, don't just throw it in some tray or drawer somewhere. If it has any residual thinner on it, it may stick to other brushes or even the tray. If it has water on it, the metal could rust. If you throw something else in there, it could damage the brush or push it out of shape. The best way to store brushes is to stand them up in a container with the bristles up. Use a small jar or any container to hold them. Sort them by size for ease in finding the right one when you need it. So there you have a short primer on brushes. A real artist could
add quite a bit, but this should be enough to get you going and keep you
from ruining your investment. |
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