The longer haired Flats carry more paint and are better for painting long flat stripes or lines (using the edge). These brushes are sometimes called “One Stroke” brushes because they carry enough paint for an artist to make a single stroke across an entire medium size canvas. These are often used by sign painters.
Shorter haired Brights are used for painting short strokes (dabbing) with oils and acrylics (think Impressionists). They are also good for drybrushing because they carry a smaller paint load which is easily wiped off before painting. (Drybrushing is making “scratchy” strokes with a brush that has most of the paint wiped off. It’s good for texturing a painting or applying a faux antique finish).
Flats and Brights are mostly used for oils and acrylics but they have jobs they can do in watercolor painting as well. Large, soft versions are called “Wash” brushes and are used to lay down wide horizontal strokes when applying washes over large areas (skies etc.). Smaller Flats can be used to pick up color out of wet watercolor washes.
Decorative painting has a role to play for the Flats as well. They are used to do one stroke “shading” when the brush is loaded with more than one color along its painting edge. When the paint is laid down in a single stroke, the brush creates a rainbow effect with smooth blends between the colors. This effect needs a thicker paint like acrylics, or oils, to work well.
Why You Have To Buy An Expensive Brush:
Because the “price” you pay when trying to do good art with a bad brush is much higher than if you buy the good brush in the first place. What’s the difference?
Cheap brushes have cheap bristles/hairs.
Cheap bristles/hairs don’t carry a load of paint properly and do not deposit it onto your art surface in a smooth and even fashion.
Cheap bristles/hairs will not give you clean edges on your strokes.
Cheap bristles/hairs break and fall off onto your painting. Then, you must fish them out and surely muck things up in the process, no matter how graceful you may be ordinarily.
Cheap brushes are put together poorly. This is why the bristles fall out. It is also why the ferrule wiggles around on the handle - driving you crazy before falling off entirely - usually into your water glass or solvent container - necessitating more fishing and mess making by you in the rescue attempt.
The long and the short of it? This is not a place to save money! Splurge here and buy cheap, generic bathroom cleanser and headache medicine to make up for it. The cleanser will work just as well and you won’t need much headache medicine because you’ll be using good brushes!!
