This is going to be a two-part miniseries about brushes and brush strokes. I thought I take this chance to introduce you to some of my new brushes. They are all synthetic brushes from Escoda. I am slowly trying to move to use all synthetic brushes instead of animal hair brushes. I’m not a vegan myself, but it’s good to know that no animal is harmed for my paintings. Another reason is that synthetic brushes are generally cheaper than real animal hair brushes. So this week’s video will be a review on some of the synthetic brushes I have, I’ll compare them to their real animal hair counterparts, give you the price differences at the time I record the video and my final thoughts. So be sure to watch the full video if you can.

Escoda Ultimo

These are wonderful synthetic squirrel hair brushes. They perform just as well as their real animal hair counterpart - the Escoda Aquario. But here’s the kicker, the cost of the synthetic brush is 1/2 of real animal hair brushes! I use these brushes just like my big squirrel hair mop brushes - big washes.

Escoda Versatil

These synthetic kolinsky brushes. The hair on these brushes is a little bit more resilient than their real animal counterpart. But it is a very versatile brush (hence the name I suppose) You can paint foliage, structure, and detail works. They have a very nice fine point on their tips and they can soak up quite a good paint.

This is just a very quick recap of the video. If you want a more detail review, feel free to watch the full video I hope you enjoy this video. As I said, I really like these brushes. The only thing I noticed is that Escoda Versatil is a bit harder than the real kolinsky hairbrush. But it’s still pretty good for me. I want to be able to switch to completely synthetic brushes, so this is definitely very encouraging to know that these synthetic brushes perform very well.

If you are interested in these brushes, be sure to check them out at Jackson’s Art Supplies. They are located in UK. Their prices on the brushes are better than many other online art stores I’ve shopped (including Amazon).

Next week we are going to take a look at how to create different brush strokes for your paintings, it’s going to be a good one!