How many of you still use Paint Brushes?

One of my other pastimes is writing icons. 

My icon brushes go in for a regular Blessing by Fr. Brendan.

That's all I use them for, and the paint is acrylic so they are easy to care for.

I also have some brushes I use for gold leaf work. Some are for applying the sizing (glue) and a couple never see paint. I rub them gently on my cheek to get a charge, and use them to pick up the leaf.

I have one for wood glue, and one that's a donor brush for it's black nylon bristles.

   I feel that brushes are essential to modelling. There are just some things that cannot be hit with an airbrush. I take care of mine, I have several but I only use one or two of them. Unfortunatly I don't brush large areas as I did as a kid but brushes really come in handy for more than just scrubbing pigments into crevices.

Good tips, all.

Good of you to take the time to detail the "magic" of caring for paint brushes. Like you I was fortunate to learn how good a friend a brush can be if treated with proper cleaning and respect. That goes for all sizes, from modelling to house painting.

I'm always amused and dismayed by the lack of knowledge many folks display about brush painting in general and by how few seem willing to devote any energy to getting good results.

Thanks for the "old school" tutorial!

I definitely use them for figures and detail work on small items.I like to attach my tools on vehicles and paint later,also pick out deck details on ships with brushes.Also for washing and stumping.But all overall painting with an airbrush.

Hi There, Bill;

 Yeah, I use a Blush brush for the very thin foils and such too.

I have about five in holders on the backboard of my bench that I use regularly.  I consider them supplies but by taking care I don't replace them very often- except those I have marked for dry brushing.  Those I use up at like year interval.  Fortunately, fairly cheap brushes work okay for that task.

One of my favorite modeling tasks is painting the gilding on old sailing warships with my best small brush.  As my fingers get old I am less good at it, but still able to do it.

  I paint miniatures for gaming and fun, so I have a few brushes on hand. I’m probably due to pick up a few more.

I used to use brushes for all my model painting, until I acquired my first airbrush, Christmas before last.  I only use them now for detail work, weathering, and touch-ups - basically jobs that need precision, control, and/or minute amounts of paint.  I have some that I've had for so long I can't remember how many years, and look after them well.

Using an airbrush in my small apartment would be super inconvenient, so I have had to rely on rattle cans and paint.

I have a dozen or so brushes, but time and again I find myself using just five of them: a #4 Simply Simmons Round brush that comes to a fine point for detail work, and four Artist's Loft Angle Shader brushes, sized 3/4, 1/2, and 4, and another size-6 Filbert brush. I've purchased all of them at Michael's in Vancouver.

Bob 

I use paint brushes all the time.  I paint figures, but I use them on ordinance, airplanes, ships.  An airbrush can't paint the instruments on an instrument panel.

As far as caring for them goes, I would not use Dawn or any dishwashing liquid on my natural hair brushes, because dishwashing detergents all contain de-greasers.  You want to replace the natural oils on the hairs of the brush to help preserve them.  That's why there are soaps and preservatives sold to clean and preserve brushes, and help them last.

I know a French figure painter who uses olive oil to treat his brushes, after cleaning them.  I often use skin oil, by rubbing the sides of my nose with my fingertips, and then shaping the bristles back to a point.

I use Nr 1 and Nr 2 rounds made of Kolinski sable, for use with acrylics or oils on figures.  I've got a couple of Windsor & Newtons, and then some others by smaller or obscure makers.

I use other natural hair brushes-other sables, or fox hair, of various sizes, for general detail work.

Oho! 

 Baron, Thank you sir! I had forgotten about the nasal oil method. I think I will go back to it. I only use oil based enamels anyway. I am getting into Acrylics slowly. If they don't brush well they get discarded.The brush cleaned and reset, and the Acrylics given to my landlady for her crafts!

knox

I paint miniatures for gaming and fun, so I have a few brushes on hand.

Same here.  I have a lot of brushes but that's for when one starts to bend too much or spread out.  I take better care of them now but I still have backups.  Most of my brushes are the cheaper sables or synthetics and they hold  up well, they get a cleaning with Master's soap then a bit of hair conditioner worked in.  When I moved away from enamels for brush painting my brushes were able to last longer.

A lot.

me too . 

Hi Knox;

   That looks like the shelf next to my bench almost. I have seven bottles( Empty Turtle food Bottles) ( I have a RED EARED Slider critter.) and they are there with their tops cut off and full of different brushes. I use a lot of Make-Up brushes on figures so a shorter bottle there.

    Each one is labeled with the type of paint they are used in. That way I don't even microscopically Cross-Contimanate them.

I use them on models to some extent and in fly rod building. No magic stories, they're a tool, a means to an end... .

Oh My;

 When's the last time you created a new rod from Bamboo? Mine is about sixty five years old now, and is still lively!

Tanker-Builder

Oh My;

 When's the last time you created a new rod from Bamboo? Mine is about sixty five years old now, and is still lively!

 

I'm not new to fly fishing but rod building has been maybe 25 years or so on again off again. I've just gone through about a five year flurry of it and started turning my own cork grips to the feel I like and some other family likes. No bamboo here TB.  Actually bamboo has had a resurge over the last couple of years or so but I've never built one. I've built glass rods though. Most have been graphite, sorry !

I remember fishing with a bamboo pole at Fox Lake, Illinois, 60 years ago. There was no reel, just a line attached to the end of the long pole. There was a hook with a worm and  a lead sinker at the end of the line. A red and white plastic bobber was used to adjust the depth of the hook. We used to sit at the waters edge and watch the bobber for hours. You know if you caught a fish when the bobber went under the water. Yikes, those were simple times.

I remember in Michigan when margarine was white in the package.  Also in the package was an envelope of pigment which you mixed into the margarine to make it yellow.

This was in Detroit- my grandma had an icebox, not a refrigerator and the iceman left a block of ice every other day.

JohnnyK

I remember fishing with a bamboo pole at Fox Lake, Illinois, 60 years ago. There was no reel, just a line attached to the end of the long pole. There was a hook with a worm and  a lead sinker at the end of the line. A red and white plastic bobber was used to adjust the depth of the hook. We used to sit at the waters edge and watch the bobber for hours. You know if you caught a fish when the bobber went under the water. Yikes, those were simple times.

 

I remember my first outing fishing around easter or so maybe 1956 or 57, I would have been 6 or 7. It was Sunday and it was my mom who suggested they take me fishing. My grandmother lived with us. Being Sunday nothing was open back then but maybe an ice cream stand lol. So, granny and I dug some worms from the garden, mom bent a hook from a safety pin. Dad cut a sapling stick and tied some gardening twine to it. And off we went, everyone piled into the Nash and we went down to the second pond in a chain of ponds connected by a stream. The one actual piece of official fishing equipment we had was that red and white bobber you mentioned. The safety pin I guess was enough to take the worm down. To this day I remember that shocking feeling of the first ever fish biting the line and not only was the fish hooked but so was I to a lifetime of fishing. As you say no reel, I caught two or three bluegill that Sunday afternoon. All dad had to teach me really was to set the hook, I got the line out ok after the first few tries with his help., Course it was all of 6-7 ft off shore lol. But ya know, families did things together back then, not so much I my me in society, though plenty of that was soon to follow.

The Nash was maybe a 54, black with a red top, a hard top, no post between front and rear side windows,, continental wheel on the back. I remember the shifter on the column and green dash lights that looked cool at night. Rode like your sofa on wheels made from clouds, probably handled about as good on those bias ply tires. We lived in inland Ma. We took that thing to Cape Cod ( where I live now), the big highways were under construction then so not passable, it was a 5-1/2 hour trip to the Cape from where we lived and that to me seemed like going to a foreign country.. Today that same trip is about 90 minutes, 2 hours on a bad day.. First encounter with fog off the bay was on that trip, fog and dew settled in on the Nash, it wouldn't start. My dad was all ticked off because it had a tune up before we left and the fog horns of the ships out in the bay that he loved now seemed to be mocking him. But the engine was soaked from condensation we didn't really get inland or not so often or thick. I know that now having been shop foreman for years to a fleet on the Cape. Great trip otherwise, first time in freezing cold salt bay water. Crystal clear, still is today. People talk about the gloom and doom, I took a picture of my mom and dad on the beach down here in front of a dune on that trip in 1957 with his Brownie camera. I can go to that same dune today, same rocks lining the canal that exits there etc. So everything about planet earth hasn't changed. What does change is the beach, we get winter storms that sucks the sand out and drops rocks. Two years later it's liable to do the opposite. Crazy, NE winter storms are very powerful here, sometimes hurricane strength, we just don't advertise it.. Enough rambling.

Hi JohnnyK;

     Geez ,youse guys is a sorry Bunch, ya know. Are you trying ta tell me youses ain't got those neat bamboo poles anymore? Buck up and git one. Make the time and go catch a fish the old way. It will refresh your life, believe me.

     After my cardiac surgery and folks would let me go places on my own I went to ***'s Sporting Goods and bought a twelve foot bamboo pole. A package of bobbers and split shot sinkers. A reel of good line and a bucket of worms. I went into the woods near the Comal river with my old person Fishing license pinned to me hat.

 Caught four nice sized Bluegill and had fish for dinner. Best day of recovery from the " Rush" life I ever had. Now I try to do it at least once a month!. I don't take anything stronger than two bottles of water and two small "Root Beers" I like DAD'S best. A nice shady spot and geez life is great !

My daughter and her husband do fily fishing in the mountains a 1/2 hour away from us.  They are going for trout.  They having lots of fun.  I have not drowned worms in decades.  Never liked it.  I like sitting by a river, but without a pole and watching.

Hi,

Right now I mostly only use a paint brush, or a sponge tip for some special items.  I recently tried spray painting a build with ome canned spray paint but kind of messed it up a bit.  

When I was much younger I did try out a simplae airbrush (run off a can of compresed gas) but was never able to get the hang of it.  And it seemed like a lot of prep and clean up if you were only painting a small item/kit.

Now that I am older though I have been giving some thought to trying out an airbrush again.  Hopefully now that I am older, maybe I won't be so impatient 

I do use an Iwata Eclipsi for major airbrushing with a compressor.  I've have used a Paasahe and a Badger 150 and an Aztec. I still use  batch of various size brushes for other jobs.  They are all part of the Hobby.  Enamel or Acrilic, it don't matter to me.  I'm not like the first poster of his is about keeping his brushes clean.  Of course, that's his career.   I do keep everything clean.  As I've gotten older and my eyes and hands go, my hands don't work as well, so figure painting has gone to heck.

PFJN

Hi,

Right now I mostly only use a paint brush, or a sponge tip for some special items.  I recently tried spray painting a build with ome canned spray paint but kind of messed it up a bit.  

When I was much younger I did try out a simplae airbrush (run off a can of compresed gas) but was never able to get the hang of it.  And it seemed like a lot of prep and clean up if you were only painting a small item/kit.

Now that I am older though I have been giving some thought to trying out an airbrush again.  Hopefully now that I am older, maybe I won't be so impatient 

 

 

I have a few friends who only brush paint, but it takes a lot of skill and practice.  I have other friends who use only rattle cans, and that takes practice too.  You cannot learn new skills instantly.  Do not try to eliminate practice.  A good source of practice material is a box of plastic spoons.  Modelers in this area use them for practice when trying a new paint, or a new painting technique.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Pat

Hey, Oldermodelguy;

      Nuthin ta ba sorry about. I just threw that in because I had a guy that Fly Fished show me how to make a Bamboo Fly rod. I have NEVER used it as a flyrod though. Geez, that thing is so sensitive the Bluegill and Crappie don't stand a chance, that is, when they are biting !