After rigorous artist testing, we developed an innovative synthetic bristle blend which offers the quality and performance you’d typically see in natural sable and hog brushes. Two new ranges of synthetic brushes have been launched by Winsor & Newton: the Professional Watercolour Synthetic Sable brush and Artists’ Oil Synthetic Hog brushes. Winsor & Newton offers a wide range of synthetic brushes including Monarch Brushes, Cotman Brushes and Galeria Brushes. Synthetic brushes often have an excellent point and can carry colour very well. They can be soft or stiff the soft brushes work well with watercolour, while the stiff brushes work best with oils.

Driven by innovation and our unique brush-making expertise, our synthetic brushes perform at a professional level. If you prefer an alternative to natural hair or are on a budget, then it is worth considering synthetic brushes. Poor quality hog is soft, weak, and tends to splay, which makes controlling the colour difficult.This type of brush will not maintain its shape well. Better hog has hair that is a little softer than best hog and will not wear quite as well.Winsor & Newton Artists’ Hog Brushes are made with the highest quality hog.

Best hog has the stiffest hair, plenty of flags, allowing it to carry more colour, and is extremely resilient – so the brush keeps its working edge and shape for longer.

Hog hair comes in different in qualities. Remember, hog brushes come in different shades if they are white, you need to make sure this is natural and not bleached, which will have weakened the bristle. These splits are called flags and they allow the brush to hold on to more paint and apply it evenly. They are naturally stiff and each bristle is split into two or three at the tip. If you’re using oil or acrylic, natural hog hair brushes are a good choice. Their stiffness is useful when using oil or acrylic. Pony brushes have coarse hair which does not form a point and offer little spring. One exception where a natural hair brush can be used effectively with thicker media is pony brushes.

Camel is a term used for an array of miscellaneous low quality natural hair brushes.

Goat brushes also have a good colour carrying capacity but tend not to release the colour as well as squirrel or sable, and have no point.

They are very good as mop and wash brushes, as they do not point as well as sable.

Squirrel brushes carry colour very well because they can hold a lot of water.

Sable brushes are very high quality, with the best – such as Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes – handmade from the tip of the tail of the Siberian kolinsky sable. The combination of the three factors increases the brush’s surface area and allows it to soak up a lot of colour. Sable hair strands are conical, springy, and covered in tiny scales.

Sable brushes maintain a perfect point, allowing for great control, and are excellent for precision marks.

Natural hair brushes come in different varieties. Natural hair brushes are a good choice for working in watercolour or gouache, because they tend to be softer and more flexible than hog hair brushes. Hair typeĭifferent media, such as watercolour or acrylic or traditional oil, require different types of brushes, and they come in four main types: Should you choose natural or synthetic fibres? Which head shape is most suitable? Is it best to go for the most expensive? Fear not: by exploring these questions just a little more you can narrow down the number of choices you need to make and find the right tool for the job. Winsor & Newton has already sent out sets of Promarkers to several prominent artists on YouTube to help spread the word about the brand.Walk into any artists’ store and the sheer number of brushes on display can seem overwhelming at first. Letraset has been acquired by ColArts, the parent company of Winsor & Newton and Derwent, and Promarkers and Flex Markers have been rebranded as Winsor & Newton Promarkers and Winsor & Newton Brushmarkers. Please don't wait for others to do so- every email counts! Your emails to companies really go a long way towards keeping this blog functioning- as it shows companies that I have an engaged, supportive audience. If you really enjoyed this post, please take a moment to email Winsor and Newton about it, and send them a link to this post, along with your thoughts, so they can see what I do. Doing so helps me grow my audience, which will hopefully help me attract future sponsors and company partnerships. If you enjoy what I do, please take a moment to share it to your social networks, so other artists may benefit. I'm writing much of this from research, memory, and photos. The original notes for this post were lost when my Surface Pro 3 died and had to be sent back to Microsoft.

Winsor and newton brush markers