Brushes – part 2 – Acrylics

Not sure what brush to use for acrylics?

If you are not sure what brush to use for acrylics have a look at some of the synthetic brushes available.

I myself use acrylic and I have quite a collection of brushes. Firstly I will show you my brushes and then a picture I recently finished.

In this first picture you can see that I have a selection of hog brushes used in oil painting, I love using these really stiff bristled brushes, to get the rough stone effect I like.

The lighter rough looking brushes are the hog hair and the yellow bristled brushes are synthetic. 

Bamboo brush roll case

Here in my bamboo brush roll case I have a selection of the brushes, there are more hog hair brushes and some white bristle brushes.

I also have a few watercolour brushes.

Acrylic painting

This is a painting I recently finished and I used a large flat synthetic brush for the background and a selection of the hog hair brushes to achieve the stone effect on the horse.

Synthetic (nylon) brush for acrylics

…they’re more resilient and as good as bristle (hog) brushes.

The advantage here is that you can use the same set of brushes for acrylics and oils. You must clean them throughly and they will last for years.

Cleaning acrylic brushes

To clean acrylic off your brushes use warm soapy water and then rinse well.

Here we have synthetic white bristle brushes with long handles. I have some of these and are lovely to work with. A soft bristle but robust.

Available in the shop at £3.95 each or any 4 for £14.50.

Softer synthetic brushes

Here we have a synthetic that is softer than the above brushes but still as robust and are ideal for use with acrylics.

About synthetic brushes

So a little bit of information about synthetic brushes.

Synthetic bristles are often made from nylon, polyester, or a combination of both. Natural bristle brushes are best for applying oil-based alkyd paints, and synthetic bristle brushes are recommended for water based latex paints. Some synthetic brushes can be used to apply both latex and alkyd paints.

These brushes are a have a good synthetic bristle and looked after will last a long time.

£3.95 each or 4 for £14.50

Larger brushes

These rather large brushes are ‘all media’ so are suitable for oil, acrylic and watercolour. A very soft dynamic bristle.

£13.75 each

Huge range of synthetic brushes for acrylics

As you can see there is a large range of synthetic brushes for acrylics, some bristles are softer than others, it’s just a matter of feeling the bristles to know what is going to work for you.

These are available in the shop at £3.95 each or 4 for £14.50

Here’s another option below. There are many more, but we have just looked at a few of the wonderful brushes for acrylics.