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Hello!

Looking at the range of brushes available on the market, not aimed at mini painting, there are lots of different brush shapes. I use round synthetic brushes (cotman 111 watercolour) and kolinsky brushes and GW dry brushes , the later 2 obviously both aimed at mini painters.

So......are any of you genius’s using different brush shapes, like flat brushes or the fan shapes ones or the ones cut at an angle, to produce good effects or make life easier?

For larger areas I use a quarter inch flat brush, and I have a larger flat brush for dusting models that have have a bit of shelf time between painting sessions

 maxwin wrote:
For larger areas I use a quarter inch flat brush, and I have a larger flat brush for dusting models that have have a bit of shelf time between painting sessions

Dusting?

'dusting' as in getting rid of dust.

I have a make up brush set that i use for dry brushing. Havent found a use for the fan shaped ones yet but the angled ones are good for dry brushing smaller areas as you can just use one corner of them.

I have two pointed brushes, one size 1 and one size 0. I also have two flat edge brushes, one 1/8" wide and another 1/4" wide. For dry brushing I prefer a very soft bristled, but stiff sable brush about 5/16" wide - if your dry brush is too flexible it won't lay the fine dusting of paint you want - if the bristles are not soft (if they are coarse) it will lay a scratchy texture. I have a wide one and a very narrow one to do smaller areas.

So, 6 brushes in total and this is kept me painting multiple armies for about 15 years.

I use flat brushes for paiting model bases or for large flat surfaces like a tank hull

You should look into getting some filbert and flat brush in your kit. It's one of those things that makes your (painting) life bit easier, because sometimes painting can be too arduous for no good reason. For example, it takes more effort than it deserves to rid large, flat surfaces of brushstrokes with 00, 0, or 1 round brushes.

Size 6~10 flat/filbert is a good size for most GW miniatures, whichever size you're most comfortable with.

Most of the specialty shapes of paintbrush are meant for specific painting techniques where the goal is to make either a type of pattern or texture with the acrylic/oil. Not the most relevant for miniature painting, where most texture tends to look bad, outside of weathering effects and chipping due to the scale of our 'canvas'. Painting models is more akin to watercolour, and unsurprisingly that's where the biggest overlap in brush sizes/shapes is.

I use a few styles but 99% of the time it's a plain ol' standard Round in my hand. A soft moppy flat makes a great wash slather-on tool, and I have a few stiff splayed and flat brushes for doing textured terrain finishes / drybrush techinques. For large vehicles, a bigger set of brushes can really help, but other than that the more exotic brush shapes don't help much in my experience.

Yup. I use flats for large areas, basing or terrain, and also for painting base rims, and feathering out enamel streaking fluids for weathering.

I also have some soft round make up brushes that I use for stippling, and a soft flat make up brush which I use for feathering out oil paints once they've been down for a few hours.