Hello again, dear readers!
Now that summer vacation is here, it's the perfect time to get our favorite brushes out of the closet.
We can enjoy painting with watercolors either comfortably from home or take the backpack and go on an adventure.
Summer afternoons are ideal for practicing urban sketching. We can paint beautiful sunsets on the beach, heart-stopping landscapes or charming villages.
In October of last year I talked to you about the basic characteristics of brushes: materials, shape, formats, …
If you are starting in this world I advise you to start there. It is important to know our best friends well and, above all, to invest our money well when we decide to add a new one to our collection.
I leave the link to this post in case you haven't read it yet.
In today's post I am going to talk about my collection of ESCODA Versátil brushes, without a doubt my favorites so far.
My latest acquisition.
These types of brushes are very useful for landscape watercolors, whether natural (grass, branches, fine details, …), or for urban landscapes (electrical wiring, communication turrets, …).
They are characterized by having the exit of the strand longer than usual.
I chose this brush for its characteristics:
- It is made of synthetic hair but, nevertheless, it retains a lot of water. This ensures that I won't run out of paint in the middle of a stroke.
- The strand is flexible but keeps its shape.
- It is ideal for watercolors of small formats.
I don't use these types of brushes too much.
I do use a flat Silver Silk brush to get some highlights, but the Versatile ones are not very good for this task.
I didn't have any flat watercolor brushes and I bought them to test how well I could handle them.
Initially, I wanted to use the Escoda Versatil flat number 14 to make large washes. And so it was for a while, until I realized that I was not convinced. I prefer to use my number 12 (or number 14) round brush both for wetting the paper and for applying the first watercolor stains.
In the near future I want to get excited about gouache and from what I've researched it seems that flat brushes are used with this material. I hope to use them then! I'll let you know when I try it.
A marvel!
I would certainly have them all if it weren't for their price. The smallest is number 2 and costs €10.71 at Artemiranda (I leave the link in case you are interested).
The largest one is number 16, but you can only get it by buying the black set which costs €63.89.
Today I have number 12 and number 4 in my collection, although I am almost sure that in the next order to Artemiranda number 2 will fall 🙂
And although they are amazing, they also have a small problem, when the brushes are closed there is NO way to know what type of brush it is: will it be a Versatile? will it be a pearl? Or maybe a Baroque? That is why I have put a washi tape around them, to identify what type of brush each one is.
To finish, I only have to tell you about my collection of round brushes. In terms of hair characteristics, they are identical to the travel brushes.
To give you an idea, an Escoda Versátil number 2 travel brush costs €10.71 and its normal version costs €6.78. What is the difference?
In addition, its range is wider, it goes from 3/0 to number 22.
By imitating the natural hair of Marta Kolinski, they retain water very well but, however, they do not completely lose their shape. They are the all-terrain brushes.
What do you think of these brushes? As you can guess they are my favorites 😀
And so far today's post, I hope you liked it.
See you next Sunday,
See you soon!
