Pinselwut, miniature painting by Solmar

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!

Today i´m coming to you guys with a comparison of two brush-ranges that are often used in miniature painting. I will tell you something about the differences in general and a subjective description about the different characteristics while painting.

Let us start with the Windsor and Newton Series 7:

 
This brush is tought to be the world´s best and finest watercolor brushes. One point i have to state immediately: These brushes are killer! They are absolutely awesome for miniature painting. When i bought some of these, i had just used Games Workshop brushes before and obviously there are whole universes between those ranges.

The W&N Series 7 comes in two versions: standard and miniature. The miniature version just have shorter bristles. I´ll talk about this later.

The Series 7 is made of finest kolinsky hair, which is known to be the best hair for miniature painting purposes. They have a round shape, a big belly and long hair so they can load much thinned paint or water. There are two points abut the series 7 brushes, that make them so great:

- Point: These brushes hold their points absolutely well! They don´t spread up their bristles under normal painting circumstances. Even with a big brush of size 3 or even bigger, it is possible to paint smallest details!

- Snap: A Snap is the ability of the bristles to bend into one direction and after lifting the brush from the surface, the bristles "snap" back to their previous position. The Series 7 performs this Snap absolutely brilliant!


This about Series 7, now let´s talk about the Rapael Series 8404: 


I bought these brushes one week ago, after getting back to painting and i had a strange feeling about the Series 7: i suddenly felt no longer as great as before with my brushes. So i ordered some Raphael brushes, which i alwasy wanted to test.

What meets the eye first are the longer hairs of the Raphael brushes. Due to the length the snap is not as "hard" as the Series 7 ones, but still VERY good. While not having such a distinct belly than the W&N, the Series 8404 still load as much paint/water as the W&N.

I have to admit: these are my new favourites! It is subjective, but i was able to control the colur better! I made better blendings with these brushes. I still love my Series 7 and use them a lot, but the Raphaels definetely charmed me. A new love. :)


What is important about brushes? What to remember?

- Brushes are a tool! Better (and more expesive) brushes don´t make you a better painter. But they help you, controlling paint better and achieving better results. But every new brush from a different range needs a small time of practice because of different characteristics.

- You have to experiment! You have to treat brushes the same way like paints and techniques: experiment. you won´t find the perfect brush for your painting style, if you don´t test around. :)

- Take care of them, love them! Clean your brushes after every session, handle them gently, look after them. These are too good servants (and by the way too expensive) to mess around with them.



I hope you found this little comparison useful. Feel free to aks some questions if you miss some information. :)

Regards!