Water color brushes

Art Discussion and Questions
1

Since I’m under the weather again (added up it’s been more than 4,5 months in total so far this year, sigh), I decided to play with my new water color materials, to get a feel for them.

I watched quite a few ‘shorts’ for beginners in water color painting, by Rebel Unicorn Crafts on YouTube and already learned a lot from them.
(I did some water color painting in the past, but that was many, many years ago.)

I keep seeing her do wonderful leaves and petals, but just touching the point of her round brush lightly on the paper, then pushing it down, while dragging, and then lifting it up again, ending in another neat point. Also, she seems to effortlessly paint thin lines with the point of her (number 10) round brush.
Now, I’ve bought myself a couple of very expensive brushes from various brands, but none of them has this extended point! Which is frustrating!
When they are new and unused, they seem to have the point, but as soon as I start using them they are just round and I have a hard time making those petal/leaf tips and thin lines.

So, my question: can anyone help me find round brushes (numbers 4-10) that hold a lot of water paint and feed it to a nice long point?

(Or is it just me and does chronic pain not give me the right level of control? But then again, I’m doing fine for the rest of it. And her brush, even though she keeps saying ‘use a round brush, any round brush will do!’, seems much more pointy than any of my shiny new ones.)

Any tips would be great!

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2

Some of the brush shaping is in how you pick up the paint– make sure you give the tip a bit of a twirl as you lift it up to keep the point pointy-shaped. (I can do this sometimes but not always, tho I’m also often working with clay stuff which is not the same consistency.)

It might be worth looking into east asian brush-painting technique? I know brush shape is a big part of character calligraphy styles, so that might be a place to look for better guidance on how to maintain a point on your round brushes.

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3

Thanks, @thanate !

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4

Good luck! (the bits you dropped into the “snapshots” thread look pretty good already. :grin: )

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5

It might be your technique, I can make very thin lines with most of my watercolor brushes by holding the brush straight up and down/perpendicular to the paper.

For specific brushes I really like Princeton Neptune and Princeton Aqua Elite.

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6

Thank you, @photojenn !
I’ll practice some more, and look into the Princeton brushes.

Thanks for the compliment, @thanate !

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7

Marc bought me a surprise gift:

IMG_20250925_123426
IMG_20250925_1234261920×1440 156 KB

I haven’t used them yet, but they look promising.
(Sorry for the glare.)

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