Artisan Brushes

I was watching NHK yesterday, and I found out the most interesting thing ever! Did you know that depending on what type of hair your brush bristles are used from can make your artwork all the more better? So there was this Japanese artisan who was featured on the episode whom was carefully painting his ceramic bowl, but he kept complaining about how the dust from the piece kept getting stuck in his brush and causing the paint to clump. So an expert in brush making came along and offered the man a new brush, made with muskrat hairs, and miraculously the artist's brush no longer clumped!

This story may sound a little lame, but it surely did intrigue me. I guess it kind of makes since that different hairs will create different effects, like how there's straight hair and curly hair, obviously if you tried painting with the two you'll have different outcomes. But this business of handpicking each strand of hair and carefully placing it onto the base is almost a lost art, one that isn't practiced very much anymore. The brushes that we're more used to in today's society are the mass produced ones, the ones with hairs of unequal lengths. Nowadays these handmade brushes are usually only used for calligraphy, but if there are any artists who follow my blog, you should consider looking into buying handcrafted brushes; your artwork will become even spectacular!

You can read more about the different types of hairs for brushes by clicking here.