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I'm sure that "Gigantor drybrush" will be *great* the first time you try to drybrush a Baneblade...

Dice Monkey wrote:

Iorek wrote:What are the bristles made out of?

Tawny Kitaen's pubic hair. It will justify the 500,000% markup.

I'll end up sticking to cheap Wal-Mart packs of brushes, just because I don't feel raped when I buy them, but I may end up coughing up for the wash brush. I'm fascinated.

GW brushes are actually pretty good.

They are slightly below top quality brushes, and are priced as such. High end modeling brushes start at about $18 a piece.

All those brushes you get at A.C. Moore for $2-4 are total garbage.

These are the one things I will buy from GW.

BrookM wrote:

Kapitan Montag wrote:

wyomingfox wrote:Yeah but would they be color coded? Didn't think so

Lol - makes me think though, I wonder if there's a way to make my existing brushes colour coded?

Can't think of a way right now

I guess dipping their ends into paint pots is out of the question then?

Physical Exertion! That Blasphemy

Only brushes I really ever found a big use for were the small drybrush and the tankbrush (which I just lost mine :( ) I agree about the buying brushes at an art store. I used to use an old brush from walmart when I first started playing and it worked pretty well. Only thing I use a standard brush for is basing. All in all I think only the stapling brush is a good type of new brush.





-Orkishly





-Orkishly

They don't look to shabby. I'll probably give them a go... I need to cull my current brushes anyway.

I inherited a few ancient Citadel brushes (back when it was called a "standard brush"). It's fine, I used it for basic blocking, but I'm pretty happy with the current range of brushes I have. Everything I've read has always said that GW brushes, while perhaps a touch overpriced, were actually a pretty solid item for the casual miniature painter. Hopefully these will continue that tradition.

I'll pass on these. In the past I had a 50/50 chance of getting a GW brush that wouldn't split within the first two days. All my GW brushes are now used as basecoating brushes as they have no other purpose other than to annoy me.

I'm still using a bunch of brushes I got for £1.20 from about 9 months ago.

That I can get cheaper and better elsewhere I take for granted. On the other hand, this is one of those things where GW's convenience is worth it for me.

GW's brushes are superior to and the same price as Revel's (which are the only ones I have a similar level of convenient access to - I don't have convenient access to an art store stocking Pro-Arte series 7 so have to get those off Teh Interwebz). So if my detail brush gives up the ghost in the middle of a project it is easier to stop by GW on the way home and pick up a new one than anything else. Plus by the time you add the cost of posting a single brush from an interweb store, its the cheaper option.

I'll have to do a price check on these new prices, but generally at stuff around the £3 mark I suspect the few pence difference isn't worth it. If I get organised I'll stick a couple of new Pro Arte brushes on my next order to Teh Interwebz, but generally I'm so disorganised I forget!

I'm no Golden Demon painter and have no aspirations in that regard, so for me GW quality is good enough. They are generally good enough for basecoat/wash/highlight/drybrush.

For once, I don't feel ravaged by GW's offer. And the coloured ends are pretty, pretty, pretty! At least they aren't just hiking the price on the old blue brushes, but have revised and redesigned the range (even if that is largely cosmetic).

About the only thing that perturbs me about these is the thought that the next WD will have numerous pages pimping them with boring intro articles (again) about how to drybrush/stipple/wash. Yawn.... But then as my sub is about to expire, that won't worry me for much longer.

What? Osbad not complain about GW's prices? Intolerable!

Colour-coded?

Really?

*shakes head and walks away*

Daggermaw wrote:GW brushes are actually pretty good.

They are slightly below top quality brushes, and are priced as such. High end modeling brushes start at about $18 a piece.

All those brushes you get at A.C. Moore for $2-4 are total garbage.

These are the one things I will buy from GW.

Nah, you definitely can do much better for less. I ordered my W&N Series 7 brushes from www.aswexpress.com for 60-70% off. I've also used Dick Blick's brand of Kolinsky sable brushes, and they're very good brushes for the price ($10ish).

It's your perogative to buy GW brushes, but you AREN'T getting a bargain with price or quality.

Personally I have struggled to find non-GW brushes that can stand up to my apparently brutal painting habits. I've tried loads of cheaper brands (so: almost all), including W&N, and they're points are all ravaged and unsalvagable after 1-2 models. GW however, especially the old red ones, have lasted and lasted, only being retired when all the bristles rot out.

That said, the GW price is a real incentive to keep trying new brands, despite. Michaels carries some white nylon brushes that seem to be working for me well enough, and are mad cheap too.

- Salvage

The old GW red brushes ARE W&N brushes rebranded. They then switched to a much poorer manufacturer for the blue handle brushes. W&N series 7 are by far the best I've used and make the red handle ones feel really crappy. So long as you dont dunk the whole brush in, and use the right brush for the right job (ie; a size 2 brush for basecoating, a size 1 brush for general work, a dedicated drybrush), they will last for years and years. I've had mine for 4 years and have not had to replace a single one.

GW's stippling brush may be new for them, but it's not a new type of brush. It's called a 'deerfoot stippler' and should be available in any art store.

I have the full range of current Citadel brushes (blue handle) and I'm very pleased with them.

I painted this model with only Citadel products:
http://pitoftheoni.blogspot.com/2009/05/genesis-chapter-chaplain-my-personal.html

The small and large dry brush are really my only complaints. They last about 10 models worth of heavy heavy dry brushing and they're shot. I'm hoping that these new ones are a step in a better direction for all of the brushes, but especially the dry brushes.

To clarify why I like the W&N brushes more... while I have had no major issues with the GW brushes (even blue handle ones), the amount of time spent trimming rogue bristles, cleaning the brush, reshaping the point between colours, etc is significantly more than the effort required from the W&N series 7 brushes. I found that I enjoyed painting a lot more with the W&N brushes as it no longer felt like I was fighting a battle with the brushes and instead they were just performing exactly as I hoped they would.

So, uhm, what W&N-brushes corresponds to the GW-brushes?

After about 30 orks most pf my (blue) GW brushes have crapped out on me. Either they split or just got really curved -.- Might as well get some quality-brushes and cleaning solution while I'm at it. Instead of just buying more GW-brushes.

The new ones look nice though. I like the color coding. A simple thing that makes life a little easier. I usually dip the ends of my brushes in metallics for the metal-only-brushes to differentiate between them.

I'm not sure which W&N brush is the old GW red brush. W&N makes everything from white nylon to the Series 7. But it's really not so much about the exact manufacturer as getting a quality brush made of quality materials. Sable is good, and Kolinsky sable is the best. It WILL hold a point better than anything out there as long as you treat it right.

As I said before, you can get Series 7 from online stores for a good price. And I've had good experiences with these brushes too:

http://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-master-kolinsky-sable-short-handle-brushes/

The reason GW "drybrushes" crap out is because they aren't some kind of high-tech tool made only for drybrushing miniatures. They're a regular brush that you happen to be using to drybrush. And drybrushing is extraordinarily hard on watercolor brushes. My advice is to use a cheapo for drybrushing, and quality brushes for almost everything else.

Brush longevity depends on drybrush technique.

If you pull the brush across the texture, don't push, the brush won't be destroyed.

As always, good technique wins!

I actually have a pair of the Red handle GW brushes that I have put through constant use for I want to say going on 10 years now. would I use them for fine detailing?.. no... but for base coating they still hold a good point and are a lot more reliable than some of the other brushes I have had.

The GW Fine Detail Brush just isn't small enough for me. I had to go to an art store and get a really nice 20/0 size brush. It let me paint eyes and write text real nice.

i dont get why they are colour coded...who keeps there brushes brisle end down?

A lot of time when I'm painting, I'll forget what kind of brush is in my hand. This way, I can just look down at the color coded end, then over at my handy cross referencing chart, and voila* question answered!

*voila: French for OMG LOL!

http://www.discountart.com/store/brush-sets.html

Honestly, where are you guys getting brushes for less than $5 per? Maybe you should buy better brushes? $55 is very reasonable for 10 brushes, even if they're NOT Kolinsky sable.

http://www.amazon.com/Winsor-Newton-Kolinsky-Sable-Brush/dp/B00251AAE8

That's a size 0 brush first hit on google, regularly $20.20 on sale for $9.49. $5 for a brush is not expensive.

In fact, I just did a quick survey of the the first five sites that came up when I searched on size 0 brushes, and not one was under $7.50.

And that's size 0. That large brush is a lot bigger than that and usually a lot more expensive. Virtually all the GW brushes are over size 0.

Don't hate on GW just cause it's habit.

I do miss the tank brush, tho, eventually mine will wear out and I will be sad.

Apparently no one has bothered to actually go look and read the brush descriptions on GW's website.

Fine Detail, Detail, Standard, Basecoat, Large and Wash brushes ARE KOLINSKY SABLE!

The drybrushes are an ox hair, nylon mix and the stippling brush is all nylon.

Looks like the new brushes cost about as much as I already pay to kolinsky* brushes at the hobby store. I doubt color-coding is strong enough of a reason for me to switch brands.

* Pedantry forces me to point out that the kolinsky isn't sable, but in fact a kind of weasel.

If the new medium drybrush ends up being the equivalent of the old red drybrush, I will definitely buy one of those. I'm not hugely fond of the GW brushes in general, but ever since I lost my GW drybrush I have had much less luck with the technique. The stiffness of the bristles relative to the overall length of the brush head was just about perfect (completely IMHO, of course).

I'll give the stipling brush a go... if I'm ever silly eneough to take the time to stipple an army.

The was brush will be extra hany for me though as everything gets a coat of a wash these days.

Cheapjoes my friends, you can get W&N S7 super cheap!! I am so happy they are right down the street from me. Perhaps I should start doing runs for my fellow Dakkas

To answer my own question. I took my GW brushes and art-student-discount-card (gotta love it) to the art-store today and shopped some brushes.

000 equals* the "Fine Detail"
0 is like a extremely sharper "Standard Brush"

*almost, bristles are a little shorter on the W&N

(And yes, they really are worth their price.)

I just read pixelpushers avatar.
Read it carefully.

So, is it jsut me- or is their color coding method pretty....slowed?

I mean- they colored the ends of the brush handle- of which most of us store handle down/bristles up in a cup or brush holder.

So, how many rejects will need to go through their brushes lookin at the handle ends to find their 'red' or 'purple'.

Woulda made more sense to put that color up by the ferrule.

But hey, this is the company that sold defective paint pots for like 10 years.