I'm needing some advice regarding brushes. I'm having a terrible time with
"tip curling" on my brushes. I've tried cheapo brushes and even a few
mid-grade brushes with both sable and nylon bristles and still the same
problem. I'm hesitant to invest in any high quality brush until I've
figured out what's going on.

With some brushes, my tips will start to curl after 20-30 minutes of use.
Others it might take a few days. I'm using Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paints
thinned with "magic wash." Here's a link to an image of a few of my
brushes. The middle one is kinda of beat up because it have been retired to
a drybrush.

http://home.insightbb.com/~sweeprman/brush002.jpg

Any advice?

Well, all my acrylic paint brushes look pretty much exactly like what you
show in the photographs - and if they're digital photos, I'd like to know
what model of camera you're using. Because I'm in the market for a new
digital camera to take photos of my miniature figs and I want what you've
got.



Seriously, tip curl is what acrylic brushes seem to do - cheap, mid-range or
expensive. I've never found a solution to get a point again and I've been
using acrylic brushes pretty much exclusively in my painting biz for the
last twelve years or so. And in fact have discovered that I can actually
paint pretty well with curled brushes - seems like the little curl is like a
dental tool. It allows one to get into the hard-to-reach places.


So either learn how to make the 'curl' work for you or switch to sable-hair
natural brushes. And taking care of natural hair brushes is another art of
it's own. Soon you'd be posting photos with the header 'help with 'bristle
splaying' on my brushes.'



MJB

I generally don't like the curl, so I prefer sable brushes. I find
sable more consistent over time, and better suited to my painting style.

There are a couple things I can suggest. One, just in
case you haven't already read this...

http://www.rgmw.org/paint/paintbrushcare.html

Two, while John doesn't mention it in his post, he does point out in the
above article that cleaning your brush frequently (particularly using a
good brush soap) helps greatly increase the life of your brush. In
regards to the curling issue, from personal experience I'm going to
guess that it's from holding and painting (pulling) the brush in the
same direction over time. Stopping frequently to clean the brush (at
least for me) results in my grip changing. Looking at my current brush
collection - I've got a few with tip curl, but not many. I mainly use
the inexpensive 'Plaid' and 'Crafter's Select' craft acrylic style
brushes for most of my work, and good synthetic or sable brushes (0-000)
at $4-$6 a pop (or more) for the detail work. You might also simply be
pressing harder than you need to / should be when dragging the brushes
across the surface of your minis while applying paint. Getting a good
paint job includes having paint that flows easily from the brush (which
is why I use a lot of the 'Plaid' and 'Applebarrel' paints over GW's -
the fact they're cheaper too is a nice bonus).

Which leads me to the question, is 'magic wash' a commercial
product or the 'thinned with Future Floor wax' trick? If it's the
latter, ditch the floor wax and get a commercial flow aid product or
even use an acrylic medium. I use 'DecoArt Easy Float' as my flow aid
(though any decent commercial surficant will do) mixed with water and I
also use Liquitex 'Slow-Dri Gel Retarder' which slows down the drying
rate of acrylic paint making it easier to brush on and blend. You might
also consider acrylic medium (comes in matte and gloss) which is
basically acrylic paint without any of the color pigment added. Adding
in a bit of medium can improve the way the paint flows and handles
making it easier to paint with, and if you use a lot of medium to low
amounts of paint you can make your own transparent glazes for creating
layered effects with a lot of rich colors showing through.

If none of these suggestions help, you might also try asking your
question on the Yahoo mini-painters group. There are tons of
knowledgable folks there who might have a working solution.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mini-painter/

Hope that helps,

Myrmidon

I had the same problem with my GW and golden taklon brushes. My advice is to
get some Masters brush soap, and clean them religiously. And also rotate the
brush when changing your grip, like everybody else has suggested. And when
using the soap, try leaving a tiny bit in the brush when putting them away.
Rotate the brush as you draw it across the cleaning cloth/paper towel,
making a fine point. It will stiffen as it dries out, and will keep the
point of the brush nice and...well, pointy. I've rescued a few "dead"
bruhses by doing this.

I don't care for the curl either, hence my inquiry. Although I must agree
with MJB that on few occasions it can be beneficial. But for most of my
applications I find it quite annoying.

Any preference to brand names for sable brushes? I walked into a craft
store the other day and was quite overwhelmed by the choices. I had a hard
time just trying to figure out what the bristles were made of.

I stick with pure sable Atlas or Windsor & Newton brushes. The Vallejo
sables should also be good. Avoid sable blends, which are just
semi-acrylics.