Hi friends! It’s been a hot minute since I posted. Not a lot going on, but I just lost my mother last month and had been in a rut. I heeded my own advice and tried using new tools to get back into painting. By the way, this post is not about getting ranked or anything, so I forgo keywords for SEO. Hope you will enjoy as this is purely me sharing something I discovered.
Foliage Brushes
I have watched a ton of videos from my favourite artists creating their own “foliage” brushes, and have created a few myself. If you don’t know what I am talking about, these foliage brushes are basically stippling brushes for creating texture. These foliage brushes are very handy to add textures to leaves and trees.
I followed Sarah Cray and made a couple of foliage brushes, but my bristles were too soft. I gave up and felt like I wasted two brushes for nothing. By the way, you will need a brush with very firm bristles (like Taklon), because the squirrel or super soft bristles will not work. So in case you still want to make your own, be sure to use a brush with stiff bristles!
I came across the Princeton Select Artiste deerfoot brushes at a Michaels, and upon feeling the very rough and firm bristles, I immediately purchased these two. I bought one in 1/4″ and another in 3/8″.
Princeton is my favourite brand of watercolour brushes, and the Select Artiste line is supposedly their best selling series. It is a mixed media line but highly suitable for watercolour. Here is the price list for the Select Artiste line. The 1/4″ brush retails for US$12.95 and the 3/8″ costs US$15.65, respectively. I used a 40% discount for one of them, which made this a pretty sweet deal.
Why You Need To Buy A Deerfoot Brush
The moment I wet the deerfoot brushes and put them to work, they created textures that I wasn’t able to create with my DIY foliage brushes. I had so much fun making different textures with these. Because the bristles are so firm (they are like the kind men brush their beard with, but thinner), they don’t clump together like softer bristles would.
So despite trying to make do with what I already have, I am completely happy with my purchase . If you do landscape paintings a lot and enjoy painting trees, I highly recommend buying at least one deerfoot brush. 🙂
