Which brush suits me as a modeller?

For painting model figures, vehicles or even complete dioramas, you naturally need a good set of brushes or brushes, but how do you determine what exactly suits you. There are mainly two main types of brushes for the modeling world, namely the synthetic brushes and the brushes with natural bristles. The beginner sets often have synthetic brushes. These are usually a bit cheaper and therefore fit better in these types of sets.

What type of paint are you going to paint with?

First of all, it is important to determine what type of paint you are going to paint with. Is that acrylic paint, oil paint or, for example, Enamel paint. Since these paint systems can never be used together, you will understand that using one brush for each system is not going to work. Just like oil and water can't work together.

Acrylic paint

This paint is made with water in the base and is therefore the least aggressive type of paint. You can use brushes with natural bristles such as Kolinsky sable hair and Pig bristles for this type of paint, as well as synthetic brushes. You can also use them interchangeably, as long as it always happens with the same type of paint.

Oil paint

As the name suggests, this paint is made on the basis of oil and therefore also has a caring function, especially for brushes with natural bristles, because they remain nice and supple. However, synthetic brushes are also increasingly suitable for oil paints.

enamel paint

Enamel paints are mainly made on the basis of alcohol. These are the mostly older paint systems and require more maintenance on your brushes and are also much more aggressive. It is therefore less wise to use more expensive brushes for this.

What type of brush should I choose now?

What we do see in the modeling world is that synthetic brushes are mainly used for oil paint and enamel paints because these paint types are mainly used for weathering and less for blending and then it is mainly a "by-product", but ok for acrylic this is still always widely used.

If you want to take the next step in the quality of your painting, the logical next step is to use natural bristles, such as pig's bristles or sable hair brushes. If you want the most optimal hairs for your brush, then choose Kolinsky Sable Hair. This is the most commonly used type of brushes for miniature model making by professionals and influencers.

Brands with mainly synthetic brushes include The Army Painter , AK interactive and Lupri .

Brands with mostly natural hair are Winsor & Newton , Raphael and Brokentoad .

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