Today I wandered through a Barnes & Noble because, why not? Just for funsies, I decided to peruse their art supplies and found these:
I found a random set of aqua brushes! If you do not know what aqua (or water!) brushes are, they are a type of watercolor brush where the water is stored in the handle and fed through the bristles so you do not have to have a water dish to paint. Good for painting on the go, however it can be tricky to control the amount of water. One of these does actually fit in a wooden paintbox I am working on. I decided to do a quick look-see and first impressions post. Note that I do not often use aqua brushes so I am not the biggest expert on them, in fact the only one I owned before this was one that came with my Sakura Koi Sketchbox. But why not experiment? To break it down:
What: Studio Series Aqua Brush Set
Price: $12.99 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Manufacturer: Peter Pauper Press, Inc. Of White Plains, NY, USA (
http://peterpauper.com/)
Where Was it Made: China
First Edition
Not for children aged 0-3 (just quoting the package here)
It would seem that Peter Pauper Press is primarily a journal and stationary items, but they do have a decent selection of children's art and educational activities as well as a few art supplies. I cannot say as I have really heard of them before, but then again I generally a shopping for books at Barnes & Noble, not art and journaling supplies. Let's take a closer look at the brushes themselves:
Three brushes made of white nylon. Why do they always seem to make aqua brushes with white nylon bristles? The bristles are inevitably going to stain, but I digress! Looks like a 1/4in flat (size 6, maybe?), a round (size 6ish?), and a mystery brush that looks kind of like a rounded round but it is not very dense so *shrugs*.
They have squeezy barrels,so in that way they are similar to my Sakura Koi one, but the barrel is much narrower and the brushes/caps look to be interchangeable.
The caps fit over the "butt" of the brush so you can post the brush and not worry about losing the cap, which is nice. Let's look at each brush individually!
First up, the flat
The nylon hairs come together nicely when dampened. I squeezed the barrel to release a few drops of water.
It also comes to a very fine chiseled edge, which is nice for detailed work. I am going to do a few swatches with this brush in my Strathmore Visual Journal using my Windsor and Newton Cotman paints. I figure student grade paper and paints are a nice middle-of-the-road option.
I used sepia here. I did have some trouble controlling the flow of water and you can see the varying intensity of the paint. That being said, the reason I had some trouble controlling the flow of water is because it self-feeds, once through the initial dampening of the bristles, I did not have to squeeze the barrel in order to get enough water to keep going and going. I can also get a super fine line with this brush, which is cool because it means I can get some line variation in my stroke if I want to do lettering. I will confess I went over the broad stroke twice because the brush dumped most of the pigment out in the first few inches, which is a bit annoying. All and all though, the automatic feed is nice, I find myself frequently having to squeeze the Sakura Koi aquabrush to get the paint wet enough to use so the fact that I don't have to do that with these is nice.
How about the round brush?
It, too looks proficient when wet. This round is the only one that seemed to have the slight coating so common to brushes when you buy them that helps keep the bristles together. It is usually something water soluable, like gum-arabic or glycerine and easy to rinse out, this is no different.
A better look at what happens when I squeeze the barrel, yay water drop! Round brushes, I am familiar with, let's see what this one does!
Similar results to the flat, only in Lemon Yellow Hue. Once again, I went over the broad stroke twice for the same reason as the flat. I can get a slightly wider broadstroke than with the flat, but my narrow line is not quite as narrow. In all, this act pretty much like a typical round brush does, nothing earth-shattering here. A nice multi-purpose brush, but lacks the precision afforded by the flat.
Now for the "mystery brush"
Once wet, it does semi-imitate a round brush, but you can tell from the tip that this brush is much less precise than the round with those furry edges. It is also less dense than the others. We will see how it reacts to paint and paper.
This is definitely a wild-child. It is too soft and to sparse for any sort of precision. Note how the strokes (in Alzarin Crimson Hue) created using this brush are irregular. Probably would be okay if you like watercoloring very loosely or going for an abstract look. I don't foresee myself using this one all that much, but it does paint. And yes, I went over the broad stroke twice, just like the others.
Lets give a final look at all three brushes:
Of the three, I like the round brush (the yellow) best, but then again, the round is closest to my comfort zone. The flat is nice as well. I am not really a fan of the mystery brush, personally, it is to difficult to control, but it came with the set so I am stuck with it. Maybe I will find a use for it the future?
Bottom Line:
Aside from the weird mystery brush, this seems a decent aquabrush set. I like the auto-feed, I like how sleek and narrow they are. I can fit them comfortably in my smaller hands, but the aqua brushes are fairly long so they would probably be comfortable for up to medium-large hands. I have not seriously tested how long you can keep painting on one fill, but because the brush heads are all interchangeable, one could fill up all three brushes and as one runs out of water, but you still need to use the round, say, you can simply switch the round to another barrel. It would be nice if some reservoir lids (like the Sakura Koi) were included so you could stow the brush handles and brush heads separately or even leave the brush heads you don't want to used at home and just take their barrels out for plen-aire work. If you divide the price between the three burshes, these retail for about $4.30 (USD) each; a bit pricier than other options, perhaps, but not by much. Not issues with backwash or anything, just issues with my inexperience.
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