Cheap Synthetic Brushes Vs. Expensive Sable Paintbrushes- Microscope examination!

Ah! The tip differences in the fibres are growth vs. manufacture; the taklon ones are stretched down to the fine point, which attenuates the material as you shear away more and more polymer bonds; the natural ones have been grown up from that fine point, meaning that the structural integrity remains pretty consistent, since it's all the same keratin network, just adding more keratin as it gets larger. I think. This is half-remembered from learning about different materials for... I don't even remember what. Might have been something about feathers and the difficulty of creating synthetic ones that are useable for any of the things actual feathers are good for?

What is the device you are using that magnifies your minis?

Think it could be really interesting to make that kind of "scientific exercise" on paint lines or types, so we would better understand what is what and why...
Could be "all types from brand X" (with brand X sponsoring ;) ) or "all shades from brands X, Y, Z". And also the "what is a shade and how it's made?" aspect.

This is a great video

Interesting video but if he brushes his cat regularly I wonder if it would be possible to take the hair from the brush and make it into paintbrushes and see whether they are any good

What no waterbears?

Just bought a Andon for soldering! Started realizing that it might serve as a multi purpose tool for my other hobby needs…well met!

How did he clean the dirty natural hair brush back to such a sharp tip. My brushes lose their tips after some weeks when i use them

Those cats are mesmerising

your vids are always so chill, espoecially as the cats always seem laid back. My cat goes mental in my hobby room and always tries to maul the orks. He deffinitely walks softly and carries a big claw....................... :)

I love the video, but I think it's been mistitled? For me the title is about synthetic vs sable brushes, but I think the video title was probably meant to be something like "I am so excited to play with my new microscope!"

My background in idk too much about the process I'm guessing the extrusion process doesn't consistently pull the fiber or it cools unevenly causing unevenness in the fiber. PET is also less chemically resistant than chitin

Awesome video! Loved the scientific approach to it

Do you live in Goobertown, USA? Never visited myself...

Another fantastic video, Brent. The knowledge you are sharing empowers me and makes me excited to paint some more.

Oh hey, I have an Artist's Loft brush. My Spotter one is real good for smaller details, it's kept its point pretty well too.

I wanna see a brush made out or brents lucious lockes😂

Diversions! Love that store! Are you from New England as well then?!

so save your hair from a hair cut and make brushes? LOL

Great content! Now I can scientifically justify that Kolinsky purchase 🤗

Great video - thank you! You do such educational vids for which I am grateful

Outstanding video

I usually don't complain on stuff like this, but come on, dude. Just looking at the brushes under the microscope isn't that helpful. You spent half the video showing every brush at every price point saying "looks good!" I mean, yeah, when you don't explain or know what you're looking for, they look "good". The value of a video like this is "What does a bad brush look like, and WHY. And how can you fix a worn out good brush"? And you answer precisely ZERO of those questions. Wasted 15 min of my life on this letdown

How about a video comparing all the different types of 3D resin out there these days? Should be a nice expensive video

I've used cheap ones, GW ones and now have W&N Series 7s, probably exactly the same as Artis Opus and other similar sable brushes. The quality is night and day. The Winsor and Newtons are worth every penny.

Hey Brent! Thanks for yet another interesting hobby video. While we are on brushes - what do you think about brush licking? Personally i find it pretty gross. Not doing it. Ever. But… I can see the advantage for a nice brush tip. Yet i alway wonder, if its a healthy thing to do. While acrylic pigments are non toxic (to my knowledge) they‘re still basically microplastic. Wouldn‘t that built up in your body over time and possibly bear unpleasant results? What does a professional chemist think?

Apparently the Artificer brushes are just Windsor and Newton Series 7 rebranded

Great piece to add weight to the natural is better conversation

What were those 50cent PBT brushes again? Polybutylene Pterodactyl?
Perfect for painting dinosaurs!

So cool to see the bristles in such detail - it's amazing. Thanks a lot Brent.

Hobby science for a hobby! Cool video, microscopes are fun.

Your friend LB (I believe that was her name, I've slept a few times since then) inspired me at ReaperCon. I'm going to print myself a Brent mini and see how well I can get it painted up.

They KILL the poor sables to harvest their winter fur from under their tails. Unless you know for sure they're farmed humanely, please please STOP buying sable brushes.

Do a video on how to highlight!! The painting part of it not the priming part please!

I use cheap brushes from amazon which work fine.

Now that you have a microscope, I would love to see what various primers look like, how smooth are they? You could even spray the glass slides!

Awesome break down of brush tips and comparisons.
You can get a lot of 40c synthetic brushes for the $28 spent on one natural hair brush.
For those of us not painting for an income, this really will out way the benefits of a natural hair paint brush I suspect.
Thanks for such an educational video.
Much appreciated.
Mon

For Science

Came for the brushes, stayed for the brushes & cats

I'd love to see a video of a loaded brush applying paint to a miniature under the microscope, to see the fluid dynamics and forces involved in the capillary action and paint transfer, bristle deflection, etc. Also, a microscope close up of the soap and chemicals cleaning an old brush. Maybe a stress test to see how much pressure a bristle can take before it breaks or deforms, to help get a sense of manual techniques?
There's a lot of invisible factors you could reveal by painting a mini and washing a brush under a microscope.

Can you tell us more about that disposable makeup brush for 7 cents? Is it worth using?

That was very interesting to watch! I‘d love to see you painting D&D Minis from the marvelous minis line, one time with brushes from the lower end and ideally the same model with mid- to high range brushes. A model with some more details while still really tiny as the minis are, would be awesome. Perhaps you find the time to show this to us. <3 One question: Did prices for Winsor & Newton Series 7 go up in price? I remember buying my size 1 only a few years ago for way under 15 Euros including taxes.

I've had issue with brushes not acting the way they should since I started hobbying back in 2019. Then I found about GreenStuffWorld brushes. They are couple bucks each but they keep their shape like a motherfu*cker. Only downside is that their biggest size is 2 and I sometimes like working with 4's

Fun science + cute cats = winning formula.

Please add info on brushes and a link for the microscope, thanks

I would recommend against trying to pluck individual bristles out of a brush; all the bristles are seated in the ferrule together, and plucking one out can change the alignment of the others. I semi-ruined a Series 7 that way one time; it ended up with two distinct points.

The solution is nail clippers. You can use nail clippers to cleanly cut an errant bristle right at the ferrule.

Going for the Cousin Itt look? You could make a million brushes with that mane LOL

Great video! I'm a professional landscape, wildlife and portrait artist, and I've bounced around various brands and types of brushes for years and have finally landed on Rosemary and Co brushes. Great quality throughout their line.

Now, while I don't mind paying a high price for a great brush (I regularly pay upwards of $100 for single brushes) I HAVE learned important lessons that save me money in the long run.

First and foremost don't use expensive brushes for work that will never be seen. In oil painting as in miniature painting there is initial block in work that my clients never see. I have a set of decent but cheaper synthetic brushes that are used for laying down basic shapes and deciding on hues and values.

This work is often the hardest on a brush so I keep to my cheaper sets for this. Later in the painting I bring out my finest Kolinsky Sables where their precision matters and can be noticed.

The 2nd important lesson I've learned is that having an effective cleaning process is a must.

I invest a good chunk of money in my brushes and I take great care to make sure they are well cleaned and maintained between use.

I've some brushes that have lasted for years, and while natural hair will eventually loose their tips due to abrasion, if maintained properly they can be used very effectively as what I call support brushes. (For instance when I paint a cat's whiskers, I rarely am able to do so without wobbles here and there in them. To fix it, I use a nice older sable brush, fill it with mineral spirits and push the line of paint into a nice even whisker.)

I enjoyed this video and have subscribed! Well done!

I’m not a model painter. I just find studies of various things very interesting. I wonder what the finest resolution of the movements of the fingers of a human is. I mean, what is the smallest coordinated movement a person’s fingers can move in a willful move in the xyz-axes. Is the resolution of the fingers movements, compared to the tiniest tip of the tiniest model brushes, so low that debating about said brush tips is pointless?