 Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of miniature painting myth busting with trove and vince and today we're gonna talk about brushes or brushes or brushes or well, I guess Brushes just brushes. We're gonna we're gonna talk about brushes Today's topic because today's topic is something I think we are going to disagree on That's always good Today's topic is To paint miniatures. You must have an expensive sable hair Brush or you must use an expensive sable hair brush for your miniatures. I actually think we do disagree on that Well, why don't you start tell me what you think and the brushes you use I Am using since forever Raphael 8404 size 1 I Get the question of what brushes do you use like? 200 times a day no exaggeration It's always in the description well alert, but yeah, I like those brushes because I Learned to to paint with really crappy brushes, and I think that actually was a good thing But once I I got a really good brush. I Just felt like all of a sudden. I'm not running the I don't know 100 meter sprint with a ball chain to my leg anymore And that was just a really good feeling if you have the right tool and a really precise tool Then you're always going to be better off then With a tool that is not as good or degrading too fast Okay, all right. I understand what you're saying Now let me ask you a question Do you own a dry brush? I know where you're getting it, but I haven't owned a proper dry brush in ages But more because I'm too lazy to get one um, I do have Makeup brushes that I use for dry brushing that are okay So I am all about the this is my point I think even you who is one of the most sable brush purists that are out there, okay I'm gonna ask you two questions after that. The first one was the dry brush I use makeup brushes well like this is what I have up on screen right now as an example Of the type of brush I use for my dry brushing. I have lots of different sizes of them Uh, various little things. They're all just things you get in cheap makeup brush packs from You know the dollar store from amazon or something like that and This is the right tool for the right purpose right when I've got a bunch of grit or sand or a base or something like that This is what I'm using, okay Now travarian, here's my next question for you because I'm gonna I'm going to prove to you that you don't really You're not really using expensive sable brushes all the time. Okay Do you have any old Sable brushes around that have lost their tip and yet you still keep them for various purposes Oh Wrong one. Um, yeah, I do have a couple of those For yeah painting putting stuff on base is Yeah, definitely like this one right right now I will openly say you and I are simpatico For detail work to me the raft 8404. It's the same thing I use I love these brushes. I just got a couple new ones for christmas recently I stand behind having Sable brushes in your arsenal I think they are an essential tool for doing fine work especially For really careful precise glazing For fine detail work lines Edges eyes Whatever small detail. I mean there's lots of small detail on minis But for those examples I think you do need a couple of quality brushes but Would you like to see what I base coat with trove because you mentioned you have these old worn down sables you're using This is what I base coat most of my miniatures with this right here This is a size 8 Uh artist brush you it says artist art, so it must be good The airbrush is also a good option This brush right here the This big fat junky brush is what I end up doing a lot of work with when I'm working on uh Just base coats laying down a huge amount of paint. Let's say you got a big giant cloak You want to work fifth, you know five different colors of paint do it real fast You're going to do a quick wet blending thing. Boom. This is the brush This is what we're getting out and my supposition to you travarian is you could do the exact same thing All right, like if you were doing that kind of work, you would have like this brush would be functionally identical To your old non no longer having a sharp tip Wrath brush right because at that point it's a junk brush. It's what we call a junk brush, right? That's what this is. It just happens to be a junk brush of a different type As a proof of what I was just talking about here's some footage from hobby cheating 192 where I Do some basically wet blending with a big fat brush. So this is a size 8 I'm using here in this video. You can see it's a very junky brush much like what I was just having on display And I'm working rough. I'm wiping the brush aggressively to get paint out. I'm not, you know, adding a lot of new water I'm working wet on wet. This is very much a wet blending type exercise And you can see here what I'm describing in that this would be Actually less efficient For me if I was using a really nice soft sable brush Because I couldn't be as rough with it. I couldn't be as aggressive with mixing the paint around I couldn't get in as well as I wanted. I couldn't wipe and work and really push the paint how I want These are the types of tasks where this brush excels It is just my my preference of When I paint I kind of want to be in control So I want to control where the paint goes and You mentioned wet blending. I don't always have control over where the Paint goes with wet blending Sometimes it does what it wants, right? So I'm trying to minimize the factors that Don't allow me to control paint. So if I have a brush that is splayed And I do wet blend with it There is a few hairs that I cannot control and they just go off to the side and that's I guess that's why I also like to do Um more basic techniques with a good brush I think you hit upon something that's really important here That is worth mentioning Which is your techniques that you tend to employ In our last episode we talked a lot about there is no one perfect way to paint a miniature that people use lots of different techniques Absolutely. So check that out And I think what's important there is that Certain techniques require a more precise a nicer a higher quality brush than others Because they're it's a technique better suited to a certain tool For example, I mentioned that your fine sable brush is good for things like very controlled glazes Very controlled precise layer finishing work is what I would ultimately wrap a lot of this up to or detail work, right? You could we could use any of these generic terms we like But if you're somebody who uses a lot of wet blending or Maybe you're somebody who uses a lot of value sketching right Banshee style or roman lapot style where they use a lot of value sketching as early steps in their miniature painting I mean roman famously will often has set value sketches with his fingers He will finger paint a value sketch on there. That's definitely a long way off of a fine sable brush That's about as far in the opposite direction as we can go right But not everybody uses those techniques And so to me it's about finding the way that the tools match with the techniques that you're going to employ Yeah, that's interesting. Um, so one of the last videos I did was where I was um showing my process a tiny bit You know start to finish on a figure and I tried to think back to to this process and There's definitely also Parts and and yeah where I just Really slap that paint on and I have not changed my brush Doing that so I don't know what would you say how does A cheaper maybe larger brush Um compare to a rafael brush As far as reservoir goes So do you think they have the same Properties when it comes to how well they hold paint and how much you can work on the miniature without having to constantly dip your brush into paint and Compare that to how much control you have when it comes to maybe tip size and sharpness of the tip and being able to use the same tool for a variety of techniques an important thing to note about the difference between sables and synthetics is that Sable brushes not only will often hold a finer tip But the belly will be a little more expansive as it will it will hold a little more paint All else being equal like length of the bristles and you know Size of the brush and so on and so forth It will generally hold the paint a little a little more Liquidity a little more water and it will generally keep it a little more wet Okay, so to get an equivalent You have to actually in a synthetic of a sable you actually have to go bigger That's why i'm using a size six or a size eight synthetic brush when i'm using these crappy brushes Because then i've expanded the belly of the brush so much Right like it's so large that this will hold a ton of paint and the other advantage here with this Is and i mean you can see it because you can see this has like the ferrule burn Of ink that's gotten down into the ferrule right something you you never want to see on your sable brushes because this means you're getting Paint clogged down in the ferrule Here i don't care if this thing goes bad. I have 10 more of these i'll just throw this one in the trash right I think that's a good point. Um, I Do not really care about that with my expensive brushes um, so I try to Get in there and slap paint. Um, and i'm not too worried About paint going up there and when people watch me paint. It's like, what are you doing? You're ruining your brush But um, yeah, so that's an expense that I gladly take because I just absolutely love the properties of the brush But I also understand if people are saying They want to do a rougher They want to treat the brushes rougher, but they also don't want to constantly buy new brushes So I just try to clean them afterwards and I completely disregard their health While painting just to very quickly address a fear here with these nice sable brushes. I see people all the time Say I got a new Sable brush insert brand here that they got. I'm afraid to use it because I don't want to ruin it It's going to get ruined entropy is a thing all eventually becomes dust except this. Okay But that shouldn't stop you from using a really nice tool that you will get a lot of mileage out of And if you treat it nicely If you don't do it you're very interested you can't get quite a lot of use out of it But eventually you'll lose the tip eventually it will go bad and you'll have to get another one. That's okay. That's just life The reason I like working with these big toothbrushes not just because I can ruin them and not waste money Because you buy these things and packs of 10 for four dollars or something, you know Uh, but also is because it does have a lot of properties I really like the fact that it's so big means that when I'm using it Sideways right when I'm sweeping with it or something I'm pulling a lot of paint and liquid out but also having this really flat actually fairly stiff surface because it's a synthetic And so it actually works as a really nice blending tool for for wet blending Which is something I tend to use a lot to set initial Initial sort of value scales before I then come back in and glaze and pop things and so on and so forth And so working fast and sideways with the brush. I get this really big Working surface if that makes sense right the the actual surface area of the brush Is just larger because when it presses down it sort of flattens out and you get this really nice way to work So it has those properties that because of the technique I'm using it's really good At that particular technique unfortunately, um, it boils down again to Try finding the tool um that helps you the most in a given situation And I say unfortunately because we get to that point a lot, right, but I guess this applies here too and No, neither of us is right or wrong. Um It's just preference and what has worked for us And yeah, I guess Everyone just has to find that Way and unfortunately it's a bit of experimenting again and having to try a few brushes To me there are sort of five brushes brush types that I tend to Think should be in Your arsenal that these can be kind of swapped and I think you're They're in your arsenal too, but you're kind of using different things for it So one is the thing we talked about at the beginning a good dry brush a good makeup brush By good, I mean something you bought in a pack of five for a dollar at the dollar store, right? They should be soft by the by the makeup brushes that are for people's eyes Because those are naturally very soft because they're meant to hit like, you know, not stab people in the eye. There you go The Second thing is uh, some kind of large base coating synthetic brush like I've got here. I think that's highly valuable I think it's um I think it's something you can use for techniques like wet blending Stippling like you don't want to really if you're if you're doing some hardcore Nature stippling like on dirt where you're stabbing you're literally stabbing as opposed to touching very careful dots Boy, oh boy. Do you not want to use a nice Sable brush for that that you will destroy the tip so fast Three is you do want some kind of solid sable brush because that will that is your proper brush for doing detail and finishing Four is something that is literal and complete junk Like this thing that I found in the yard somewhere. I think once buried under a rock Like bugs crawled away from it and then I grabbed this brush Uh, I use this for for getting in with washes on bases or things that need to be or terrain Or stuff like that like things that are are going to be really really rough garbage work Where I'm just trying to like dip the whole thing in a wash or in an oil wash or something like that and just slather Liquid around right and I just I don't I'm going to ruin this thing over and over and over again And then five is just the previous form Of your nice brushes. So your your your sables once they lose their tip. They're still very useful because they they still have that Quality and I use them for a lot of mid-level layering work where I'm not trying to get precise yet I don't need the sharp tip because I'm not doing detail But I want the control and those have that nice tension that I can do that work with without Burning the tip those are kind of the five brushes that I I tend to think of The way I use those brushes they become more like a universal tool almost like a swiss army knife Where I feel like they can do all of these things except those That work or the work Where they would get destroyed, you know using paint in a rough way And stippling and and just complete disregard for a brush try To keep an open mind if even if you even if you prefer one or the other Don't close yourself off Towards trying brushes that are you know, maybe more ruined or maybe stiffer Or are brushes for a different purpose and just try to experiment with it Even if you have that one style and If you're like me and you're saying no, I just use that for everything Even then it's good to to try out brushes In a completely different way and who knows what you might find. Maybe you find the perfect technique So there you go Do you need a sable brush? Yeah, probably does that need to be the only brush you use? Probably not Travian says that's the brush he uses most of the time and it's true and he uses it as a multi-purpose tool But even he has older brushes or junky brushes. He'll use for me. It's about the right tool for the right job I don't get out of hammer when I need to screw something into the wall And in the same way, I'm not using a really fine sharp expensive brush when I need to slap around a base coat So there you go I hope that helps you find the brushes you need and you that suit your style But as always, I thank you very much for watching Don't forget this series alternates between my channel and Travarian's channel So if you're not already subbed to him, his channel is linked below and you can find the alternating episodes Over there on his channel or you can see the playlist which has all of the videos on both of our channels Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time